Frecuency and amount of cuts when cutting SPS

[Da8]

Haven't read nothing about it.

How many days should a healthy mother colony rest between cut and cut?

And how many cuts is safe to make in a session?

For example, this tenuis colony.
Last time I cutted two frags. 21 days ago.

Want to cut the side off because it is attacking its neighbour.

Thanks

 

[reefproaquatics]

Frag away. You call literally cut a frag from every branch and the coral will heal.

 

[Da8]

I'm a coward. The coral is very big but with little base, so as I cutted, it shaked much, so just one cut for today...the photo is ten minutes after the cut.

 

[ScottR]

Cutting forces it to heal and regrow. I see it as regeneration. I don’t see why you would need to wait through cuts; so long as you leave enough for the mother colony to thrive.

This is my reefing buddy cutting up his birdsnest because, as he says, it keeps invading his tank.

 

[Bpb]

I'm a coward. The coral is very big but with little base, so as I cutted, it shaked much, so just one cut for today...the photo is ten minutes after the cut.

Be careful with that. If you don't frag it, and it continues to outpace its base growth with branching growth, it'll simply fall over under its own weight. Happens in my own tank constantly. And once that happens you're in a pickle, because the coral is too heavy to reliably glue back down where it fell, so then you're forced to either chop up 2 dozen frags on a colony and try to sell them, which if you're not in a big metropolitan area, may prove to be a massive challenge. Or...try to relocate it in the tank and place it somewhere where it can balance still and not fall back over, which completely jacks with the growth shape, and exposes all those dimly lit sides and just makes the colony look weird. Ive actually had to sacrifice a basketball sized acro colony before because it fell over and I literally had nowhere else in the tank to put it, and nobody anywhere close to buy it.

TL;DR
If the coral is healthy and growing, you can literally frag it to oblivion and itll grow back.

Treat fragging like bonsai. Frag for shaping and encroachment. I typically will not frag just to frag or make a buck. 99% of the time it's because I need to

 

[jda]

I have found a correlation between size, health/thriving and fragging. You can probably take 20 frags from a thriving colony and be OK, but if the coral is suffering, not growing or smaller, then that could have a massive frag loss and even colony loss.

I like to limit frags to where the colony does not slow down growth after I frag it... I want them to keep on chugging and fill in those holes in 4-6 weeks. I limit to 4-5 frags at a time on a 6-8" colony and 8-10 frags on a 12" one.

BTW - I do not consider MBP&S to be the same as acropora. I could literally take a basketball sized Monti or Birdsnest colony, drop it on the floor, pick up all 300 pieces, mount them and they all would do well. Acropora is not that easy.

 

[joseserrano]

My experience, most ppl do 1-3 cuts per week. Depending on health of coral. Typically takes 1-2 weeks to heal over of healthy