Leather Coral too big

I have a Leather Coral which is doing so well it's grown huge and is very nearly about to grow out of the water soon.
Can anyone tell me how to cut and frag it.

 

Bump....anyone? How does one frag a Colt Coral? ;D

 

um, well ive fraged a kenya tree coral...i just cut a brance off and rubberbanded it to a rock, they r pretty resilient

 

Colt Coral it's not (I'm a brit) and leather coral is a soft coral with a large plate like single head - mine's about 10" accross

 

Isn't there different varieties of leather corals? I myself have a toadstool leather coral and it has a staulk with a canopy of polyps. I have heard you can just cut a piece from the canopy part and either glue it or secure it with a rubberband and it will connect itself to the rock and grow again.

 

What I do is take a tooth pic and whittle it flat in the middle. Then cut a piece off the coral and stick it with the toothpic. Then I put the new frag on a piece of rock and line up the frag so that the fresh cut side is contacting the rock the best I can then I take some elastic thread ( available in the wifes sewing drawer or at the fabric store) and make loose wraps around each end ot the toothpick attatching it to the rock. Be carefull not to make it too tight you dont want to smash the coral. This is why I prefer the elastic thread as opposed to the rubber bands. You have more control over the tention and the coral seems to fare better. I have fragged probably 10 or 15 this way ant it works good. When I get home from work I will post some pics of the fragged corals with the toothpics still in place.

Jay

 

In addition you may want to frag it outside of the tank if possible in some tupperware with tank water to keep the 'ooze' in the tank to a minimum.

 

I agree with Matt. I also suggest some latex gloves (without powder) for the proceedure. Glasses are also good if available. You don't want any of that stuff in your eye.

Aaron

 

Thanks for the info guys, when i can pluck uo the courage i'll have a go

 

When I was at MACNA last year I went to a fragging workshop. It was so cool! We did a leather coral that was huge. The facilitator just cut it up with an exacto knife into smaller pieces. Here I was thinking this thing shouldn't even be out of the water and here we had it on a cutting board. We all got to frag a piece of it by pretty much the same method that Jay described. Mine is doing quite well! I really thought that corals were a little more fragile. It really gave me a good heads up on fragging. One thing I didn't like was the smell of some of them when you cut them....especially xenia