Favites Fragging 101

Methodology:

The method I use for fragging the majority of hard corals is primarily the same with the cutting tooling being an Inland band saw.

Cooling liquid used is fresh mixed saltwater with enough iodine to color it a light amber. This helps to disinfect cuts as they're made which has shown to greatly increase frag survival.

All corals are stored during cutting in a small bucket holding water taken directly from their home aquarium. This water is used both to keep them wet as well as for rinsing any flesh away from cuts while I'm working on them.

All finished, and rinsed, frags or trimmed colonies are soaked in Brightwell Aquatics Restor dip to insure that minimal flesh is lost.

Both soak buckets are rinsed and replenished between colonies to reduce the risk of interactions between loose flesh of different coral species.

Notes about Favites:

Favites is one of the corals that will bear significant advantages if corallite boundaries are followed, so when cutting these corals, I always try to follow directly along the top of corallite walls.

As with most LPS corals with encrusting growth, cutting frags as thinly as possible will help to accelerate growth.

Cuts are sped up 8x

If there's a specific species of coral that you would like to see cut up, feel free to comment in this thread or send me a PM.

 

nice!!

 

Very nice Mike. Easy to follow too.
I am loving your 101 posts lately.
Do you crank those beats while fragging? I bet that helps.

matt

 

We crank those beats all the time!

 

Great video. It is really cool to see a cross section of a coral skeleton. I wonder why they have all of those compartments.