First torch, made a mistake

[Chefwheredyougo]

After wanting a torch for quite some time, a lfs worker had quite a few indos in one of their personal grow out tanks. I finally convinced him to sell me a frag of one, neon green with blue tips, (I won't say what I paid for it). After I brought it home, I tried to remove it from the plug, being as careful as I could, and the frag shattered in my hands... small frag broke into about 6 smaller shards. After a ton of searching, I found that it isn't necessarily uncommon for this mistake to happen, and sometimes it ends well. I could not get the pieces together well enough for a rubber band or super glue. I decided just to put them back in the tank in lower light and flow, and see what would happen. All small frags have tentacles out and gently flowing, no brown anything around them.

My question is, what do you think are the odds of survival? Should I just remove them now or let them be and hopefully have 4 small indo torch frags survive? Sorry for the shi**y pics in advance.

Third pic is of the biggest chunk and a few of the pieces that managed to stay together

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

Oh, and thanks for the help and suggestions in advance!

 

[King Turkey]

I have not run into this. fallowing.
wish you the best of luck torches and hammers I think are my favorite coral so I rely wish you the best of luck.

 

[vetteguy53081]

They don’t necessarily need the plug for survival as they will attach to rock or other structure However place them where they CANT get blown away especially into a crevice

 

[Jake_the_reefer]

So from what you are saying did you have one polyp that shattered into a bunch of chunks? Or a small colony that its heads broke off

 

[Phil D.]

Here is a ray of sunshine for you, I bought the daughter a real nice frogspawn on a crappy brown frag plug, went to cut it off and BOOM! same thing as you, it shattered!! We glued together the pieces as best we could with one piece left over. Put them into the tank praying they would live, and voila!! They are growing nicely and are HUGE! Here is pic of her tank, you can see them on upper right side.

 

[EmilyXLC]

I don’t have any advice, but I’m sorry to hear that this happened— I can only imagine how upsetting this is for you.

I really hope that it can pull through—I, too, have been eyeing torches for the past few months.

 

[ReefPiracy]

One issue fragging a torch or Duncan head is that bone cutter will exploded the skeleton killing the head. I only use the band saw on this type of coral.

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

Thank you Phil, that's comforting.

So from what you are saying did you have one polyp that shattered into a bunch of chunks? Or a small colony that its heads broke off

It was one frag that shattered into about 6. 3 completely broke off, the others were hanging by a thread so I kept them together

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

One issue fragging a torch or Duncan head is that bone cutter will exploded the skeleton killing the head. I only use the band saw on this type of coral.

Bandsaw was used. I watched the entire process. Frag was cut smoothly from the mother colony and placed directly on a new plug. I was just trying to remove the frag from the plug to glue it to a rock when, I guess I gripped it too hard and the frag came off the plug as intended... but in shards instead of a single frag.

 

[kapnkush608]

Was it one head that broke into multiple or was it multiple branches that broke apart?

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

sorry, one head.

 

[kapnkush608]

sorry, one head.

That sucks man. I don't have any clue what I would do. Imma pray for you fam.

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

Thanks man. So far everything looks good. The tentacles were out and still long. I figure if that would have killed it they wouldn't have come out at all. Here's to hoping I now have 4 frags...