Does fragging acros induce them to grow faster?

[redfishsc]

I have a green millepora frag that's 1" long, sitting 4" away from a teal blue millepora frag that's about 4" long with 5 or 6 short branches.


The bigger, blue one grows fine. So do other SPS in the tank.


The green one does nearly nothing. It has encrusted the rocks, but I've had this one for 8+ months now and it's doing nearly nothing.


I'm thinking of snipping the tip of it to see if the healing process gets it to growing. I've read that pruning the tips can cause them to Y off into multiple branches.



Tank--- 25g tank plumbed into an 80g+ system.

Nitrate-- 0.0 (salifert)
Phosphate--- barely detectable (Seachem) so I'll guess it hovers around 0.03-0.05ppm

alk- 9, and stable.
calc, 480
mag, 1450

Light-- 250w DE Phoenix and 8 Cree XRE blue LED's for blue supplementation.

 

[Gills 619]

My experiance with softies says it rings true but will tag along with sps. I also have a frag thats 1" tall has a big base and no growth after 8 months. All other sps grow very well.

 

[seminolecpa]

In my opinion, it does. However,I have no concrete evidence to back it up other then my own personal observations with my tank.

 

[redfishsc]

I dunno, I'd say your experience is plenty concrete evidence enough, at least for your system (since they all vary from one to the next).

Ok, this afternoon I'll take a pic of it and then try to snip the tip. We'll see what/if it does in the next month or two.

 

[rbnice1]

I have a scripps stag that encrusted nicely but had no growth. I fragged a small piece and where I fragged it in 6 weeks has 4 branches coing out of it and has grown nicely.

So in my 1 try at it it worked nicely. I will be snipping the end of a small harry milli that wont grow next to see if it works on it too.

 

[seminolecpa]

I like to see it as good karma for sharing my corals with others

 

[Adam_T]

Hahaha, that's a good outlook. I'm actually having a similar issue with my acro. Everything in my tank is growing BUT that. Base is fine...but not growing. Even before reading this thread, I broke a small piece of the tip off last night to see if that would help.

 

[redfishsc]

Lol, Adam, maybe it's in the NC water.

If we get them growing, maybe we can swap acro frags next time I got to Rock Hill to see my family.

 

[beeker]

IMO yeah cutting a tip off seems to always spur growth in my sps, not to say this happens 100% of the time more like 80% as long as all other water params are where they need to be at

i've seen this in my blue tenius, my purple acro, my ORA red planet, though normally after i cut a tip off it's completely healed within 2 weeks and then starts the excess spurt this is what typically happens in my corals

 

[redfishsc]

80% is good

Ok so maybe I'll trim several. My other SPS are growing just fine but a few are getting close to trimmable size. I have a 15" cube frag tank I am going to be putting some light over soon, so I'll toss them in there.

 

[Adam_T]

oooo 15 inch cube, nice. i'm saving up for a 18'' right now myself!

 

[beeker]

yeah my ORA red planet was just a solid base and only had 1 tip that was about an inch long, i took half that tip off and after i choped that half tip off it regrew in 2 weeks and sprouted about 6 more tips out all around the base, so to me that is a good end result of fragging

maybe i can get some pics in a day or two of what it looks like now after i took the tip off

 

[redfishsc]

Ok, I just circumcised the green millepora.

For reference purposes, here's the pic. I transplanted the tip elsewhere. I'm not showing the pic of that b/c you guys would laugh at sophomoric way I epoxied it to a rock.

This millipora has been like this (except about 1/4" that I trimmed) for 8 months. Even the encrusting hasn't done anything in months. Let's see what happens.

 

[nvdiz]

Curious to see more results on this. I just learned a similar concept that occurs in plants. Its called compensation, which is when some plants have small spurts of growth due to tissue loss.

 

[redfishsc]

You know, you're right.

I have a friend who is big into ornamental gardening and he was telling me that clipping the ends of bushes will cause them to grow more dense b/c the tips split into two or more.

Good call.

 

[motownmego]

i deffintly agree, i have a teal stag that was growing branchs around the base i cut them off and now they are growing way back faster.

 

[yeldarbj]

I've had good luck with fragging to encourage new growth as well.

 

[arod2051]

Here are some photo's showing that cutting tips of branching stony coral really does cause more growth. I've been having trouble getting my coral to grow, with one exception. I have red A. millepora which I cut for a local swap in August 2009, and the growth from that area I cut has been phenomenal. See the pics for the proof. The growth has also been thicker, probably due to the amount of flow that the piece is in. This coral is in the lower half of the tank and sees about a 250-300 PAR with strong indirect flow.

August 2009: Notice the small white nub, toward the right. That is where I made the cut. (side view)

Feb 2010: The picture is self-documenting. (frontal view)

 

[krak256]

i see that everyone is cutting the tips, what about just filing down the tip? i have a red planet i wanna try this on, but i dont want to frag a cm off to induce growth.

 

[redfishsc]

Probably would be fine. If I had to guess, the faster growth is a "stress induced" survival mechanism, kinda like how anemones will sometimes split when massive water changes are done.


You could probably take a small spoon or butter knife and just crush the growth tip a little.