what is coral propagation?

[fishfreak]

What is coral propagation? It sounds interesting. How do you go about doing it?

Thanks

[marshalrckman]

Well what you do is take a coral-good starters are zooanthids-and you carefully pry it off or cut a pice of rock that it is on off and you have a frag.What you do from there is set the frag on some small pieces of live rock and they spread-or you can take the single polyp from the rock and GEL glue it on a piece of rock.soon they will grow and you can have one colony for a long long time.
http://coralforum.com/cms_view_article.php?aid=73
http://coralforum.com/cms_view_article.php?aid=74
these should help you better understand and give you some ideas of what it is and help you with your when you start.It can save ALOT of money.

[fishfreak]

Will I be able to do it in a 10 gal? 5 gal? Hwo do you cut them if you want just a couple of polyps from a colony of zoas?

[Condiman]

You would be better off in a ten gallon. That is what my current setup is and it seems to be working quite well. All I did was make some shelves using eggcrating and an old skimmer to help keep the water clean.

[marshalrckman]

most deffinatly-i would go for the 10 gallon though-and dopnt cut the frags inside the tank or leave on the open air for to long-use a tupper ware bowl and dont put the water back in the tank-zooanthids are poisinous-if thats what your using-what are you using?

[Condiman]

Here is another link for you http://www.condiman.com/myarticles.htm

[fishfreak]

How do you cut them if you want just a couple of polyps from a colony of zoas?

[Condiman]

What I did was take a sharp razor blade and cut between the polyps I wanted to seperate and then took a small chizzel and split the rock that they were attached to and when I was done I was left with two seperate peices with zoes on them.

[AfAqua]

Try to get your hands on Anthony Calfo's Reef farming book.

[marshalrckman]

i havnt heard of that book-where can i get it?sounds helpful

[fishfreak]

Well I am not going to get the 10 gal. Can I still propagate them in my main tank?

[Condiman]

Here is a link to where you can get the book http://www.readingtrees.com/bocpV1.htm

[marshalrckman]

I am goiong to order that-sounds like it could help me thanks condiman.

[Condiman]

I am waiting for my copy to come back to me. I lent it to a friend and I feel lost.

[marshalrckman]

I know how you feel-i lent out my contiencous aquarist book and now when i need info i have to call the LFS.

[BoldAsBrass]

I prefer to use small living rocks for propagation. No cutting and no one gets hurt.