I think it's more about how they handled them when they were out of the water vs in the water Just from how much and what kind of glue you use your death rate could vary by a ton... imo these guys just didn't have the experience, they did succeed in killing some frags of an endangered species though.
Fancy bar graphs are good, but when you're ignoring every variable that affects frags other than size you're throwing science out the window. It reminds me of a story I heard from my statistics professor a decade ago: there's a direct link between hole-in-ones on golf courses and drownings, and it sure looks good on paper as long as you ignore that they all happen on sunny days when more people are outside.
I may not have a few 100,000 frags under my belt, but I've been to this rodeo plenty of times in the last decade with several hundred frags purchased and many fragging events to these purchased corals after colonization.
Moral of the story for me is the author obviously must have clonwfish survival rates mixed up with frag survival rates. 13% is more like clownfish survival IME.
Why can't majano or aiptasia have a 13% survival rate after fragging?:celeb1:
Seriously, there are some tricks of the trade and tank conditions that must be met when considering fragging.
1) Have you ever ended up with your fingers glued together from CA? If so you would quickly realize that the CA heats up.... Bingo, a quick dunk in the tank or a syringe squirt of water cools the CA and reduces this heat. The frag out of water doesn't kill, the heat from the CA does. Try it with one of your more sensitive species and I guarantee the 'uncooled' frag will likely RTN. I can vouch for this, as ALL my frags sit on the tank rim for at least a couple minutes for the glue to setup. Then they are placed in the frag racks. Never have lost a frag since adopting this cooling method from a buddy of mine that runs a shop in northern CA.
2) Sharp bone shears are your friend. the cleaner the cut with the more precision has helped in reducing recovery time. I can only say that after I quit using SS wire cutters from Bass Pro Shops and started using surgical bone shears. As a result, my frags started healing MUCH quicker. Just my observation with particularly no scientific proof except my own eyes.
3) I can cut a 1/16" nub with corallite from a M. Digitata and will guarantee full recovery, whereas I have had a 80% STN/RTN rate with wild colonies that are baseball size+. So obviously 1/16" nubs are the best bet for all corals... If you didn't catch my cynical nature, this is exactly on par with organism's stats prof's comment. When presenting statistics, you can sway the numbers in your favor just by omitting key points of concern like how was the wild colony handled, time of year and how was it transitioned in the many systems it likely 'visited' to my posession. I can tell you the nub saw 2 minutes outside my tank and voila...back in it's happy environment only a little shorter.
If you want to be successful at fragging choose healthy specimens to start plucking branches from, use a good quality CA with a quick ooling splash/squirt, and provide the optimal flow, light & chemical balance to achieve maximum potential. I have lost my fair share of purchased frags, but had no control over these until I received them. On the other hand, I have never lost a frag from a cutting incident. I may have lost some due to light shock during a bulb change and premature acclimation, which is purely aquarist error.
It's amazing what can be published these days as scientific fact. If I turned in that kind of work for an experiment/study in college, I would have surely received a lovely 'D' for dumbXXX.
