fragging Dendro

[Qckwzrd]

I recently purchased two dendros from a website. One came in with a piece of the body broken off and hanging. Should I leave it or completely break the broken piece off and will it grow a new polyp if do break it?

 

[mikekman]

Hey qckwzrd, I say leave the piece. Just continue your feeding and water changes and the coral should get fatter and then start budding out some babies. Doing anything now might stress the coral even more.

 

[Echidna09]

I would leave it and see what happens.

 

[Qckwzrd]

ok Mike and Echidna. I'll leave it, as we speak I am feeding them mysis and they are eating. IF the piece did break off would it grow a new dendro? I am going to leave it so I wont stress it tho.

 

[mikekman]

Qckwzrd, if the other piece had a dendro baby forming then probably. But I don't think with a piece of flesh it would form a baby. Its not like xenias or other softies or like sps were a tiny piece of flesh could form another colony, polyp, etc.

 

[ViPeR_930]

If you break the piece off it'll grow into a new polyp. I've broken a dendro in half (accidentally) straight through the mouth and found both halves formed new polyps.
Also, sometimes when I frag a head off there may be some extra flesh left behind and they've grown into new heads. They're remarkably resilient.
I've considered smashing a dendro with a rock and glueing the dozens of tiny fragments down. My bet would be close to all of them would form new polyps.

 

[mikekman]

Hey Viper, I had no idea that even a piece of flesh could form another new polyp. Wow! I mean xenias, mushrooms, sps, etc can do that but I had no idea dendros do even do that.

Viper, any idea what the inside of a dendro looks like? Just a bunch of guts or ?

 

[d34532]

Leave it be. If it was recently frag and you just got it from the mail and decide to break it off your going slowing the recover. I have 1.5 dendro. The half piece has recovered but looks very odd when its eats but its alive and growing and still attached to the full one.

 

[Qckwzrd]

Its eating. I didn't want to frag it, but its broken already. I'll try to post pics when it eats to show how the mouth opens up. I didn't know you can frag dendros like that either. Wonder if you can do the same to a Rhyzo? Hmmmmmm

 

[ViPeR_930]

The insides of the dendro didn't really look like much, just a jumbled pile of tentacles.

Got a rhizo you're willing to experiment on qckwzrd?

 

[Echidna09]

Hehe, I think even if I witnessed a very experienced aquarist break a rhyzo in half (or more) and the pieces grew in to new ones, I still don't think I would try it.

 

[mikekman]

I wouldn't try it to a rhizo even if it works because of the fear that a 600+ coral could die out on me!

Post more pics qckwzrd.

Viper, I would like to see you get a polyp of dendro, smash it to pieces with a rock and then see if it grows into a bunch of pieces. I'll give you 50 bucks to do that provided that you gimme 3 polyps that grow out of the 10+ thats created from doing that I'm serious too! Wanna try it? Let me know!

 

[Qckwzrd]

Wish I did have a Rhyzo to try it on. If I had gotten it for a good price I would try it...well think about trying it lol. I'll post more pics Mike. They are doing really good, eating and showing the tentacles more. The hanging piece seems to have tentacles on it.