Just say no to small frags!

[Akwarius]

I question the experiment. 13 percent survival?! Once I accidentally brushed my hand against my sour apple birdsnest colony(very brittle!) and about ten 1/2"-1" pieces broke off. I glued all of them to individual frag plugs and had 100 percent survival. There are other factors to consider for survivabilty such as species and length of time in captivity.

 

[Just Clownin Around]

there is a vendor here that I will not metion that sells 3/4" sps frags for top dollar, I just think thats ridiculous

sad part is he is cutting maricultured corals and calling them le's

 

[emerald525]

I think of equally importance to the size of the frags is how long they were in the holding tank prior to selling. While size is important, I have found that the true fraggers clip, glue and house their newly cut frags for weeks and sometimes a month or more. This way you are assured of greater survival and they healed in the tank's water that they were cut from, etc.

IMHO

I completely agree with this and suspect this may be more important than the size of the frag.

Not to get to ot, but the article mentioned different survival rates for fragging under water. What is under water fragging?

Maybe I'm the only one, but I have to call at least some agenda based BS in that article. I was going to post a thread, but you beat me to it. One, it is based on one species of coral done in the wild. To draw absolutes from one small data set is irresponsible of Coral magazine. I generally try to cut larger frags now that have decent sized colonies, but over the last decade, I've probably cut at least several thousand SPS frags, all of which were glued out of water. If I'd had even as low as 75 percent (percent sign doesn't work) survivability on them, I'd never frag again (have only had nice sized colonies the last three or so years). Sure, more surface area puts on more surface area more quickly than less surface area, but to make the blanket statements they made irritated me. There are very few absolutes in life... Larger frags never hurt, but to say that if you cut 1" frags and glue out of water, you'll only see 20% survival rates is straight up crap. Numbers do what you want them to...

I agree there are a lot of factors that the article did not include and there is a huge difference between wild versus aquacultured colonies. However, I felt like it was a good start to actually start seeing some science behind what I have personally seen. I could fresh frag radioactive dragoneyes probably leave them out overnight and they would still survive LOL. I personally have never done the underwater fragging and glueing technique but I do make sure the frags are out of water as little time as possible and put them in revive after fragging.

 

[myzislow]

there is a vendor here that I will not metion that sells 3/4" sps frags for top dollar, I just think thats ridiculous

why not mention them? Plenty of people/vendors sell sps frags in the 1/2" to 1" range. I've personally have had great success with even the smallest of sps frags. The buyer and seller should communicate with each other and the buyer should know exactly what they're getting before any money is sent. Now if a vendor advertises 1.5"+ frags and ships out 1/2" nubs then there is a problem with that for sure......

now smaller 1/2" chalice nubs give me more troubles than any corals so far. Seeing some of the specks that are sold in the classis really make me scratch my head.

 

[Flake]

now smaller 1/2" chalice nubs give me more troubles than any corals so far. Seeing some of the specks that are sold in the classis really make me scratch my head.

Those are the ones that get me. I'll buy smaller sps frags but the chalice frags the size of the tip of a pencil eraser just don't fly with me.