Snip all of the tips?

[stylolvr]

Good thought Jeremy.

Anyone have some long-term growth photos using this method? Any change in morphology after the pruning began?

 

[miwoodar]

I had a tiny 8-branch hyacinthus table that looked healthy but didn't grow squat over the first year or more that I had it (except for about 6 months of good encrustation at the beginning). I eventually decided to kill it and broke off all the tips. Bammo, it woke up and has been growing well ever since (with the exception of about a month of stunt after switching to a new tank).

I regularly break tips off of anything that appears 'dormant' but otherwise healthy. IME, it can immediately jolt them back into a growth phase.

 

[NanoReefWanabe]

i took it upon myself to break a couple pieces off, after recently noticing a crazy spurt after accidentally breaking a new tip off...

this is just a run of the mill blue tip stag ( quite nice i think as the polyps are pretty bright green and the tips are very blue of this coral...
i didnt take any immediate pics, theni stumbled on this thread a day or two later, so i figure why not take some pics...well holy poop, the coral had already healed over and was sprouting new tips after three days...

where i broke it off...(pshow the heck are you guys cutting these? i almost snapped the whole coral off the rock trying to break on small branch off) notice you can already see the blue tips forming...

and here is the frag, i actually broke off the end of it too...i now have three frags of this same coral and they have all already encrusted to the plugs it has been one week now, i ill take an updated shot later...but this is the same three days after the cut, as the first...

 

[jennmac415]

first of all, I agree with this" pruning" method to increase growth... but I have a dumb question... do you all just manually brake off tips or actually use clippers of some sort??

 

[madadi]

i use a hard plastic stick to scrape off the tips. when i brake off more then half inch i run the risk of growing multiple branches from the spot. sometimes you might want that sometimes no.

 

[IFbettas]

I used bone cutters when I recently did this. They are easy to use if you are trying to frag relatively large piece. All of the corals that i snipped the tips on are now growing back several new tips too.

 

[NanoReefWanabe]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14360546#post14360546 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by madadi
i use a hard plastic stick to scrape off the tips. when i brake off more then half inch i run the risk of growing multiple branches from the spot. sometimes you might want that sometimes no.

so just rubbing off the growth nub the coral will tend to grow outward again rather then sprout new branches?

i prefer the grow new branches...i usually break it manually just below the new growth nubs...

i like sticks, but i like branching sticks too...

as for cutting, i have tried scissors= very bad results, generally coral broken in many places you dont want it to.

i have tried lineman pliers= same result as above

next up are my ratcheting pruning shears i use for work...hope my luck is better...

certain coral, like birdsnest i just hit with a hammer and pray i actually break a piece off it....that has to be the hardest coral i have ever tried to cut...

 

[spleify]

I use dikes to cut mine.

and my pink birds nest breaks, if I look at it wrong.

 

[x2uranium]

Mine too spleify, I have seriously 100 random peices laying around my tank some are growing nicely lol

 

[jennmac415]

sry... but what are "dikes"?

 

[fred fishstone]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diagonal_pliers

I just learned something...never knew the were really "diags."

 

[SunnyX]

So, anything new to update?

I know a couple of you guys had experimented with and was curious to see your results.

 

[IFbettas]

So far this has worked pretty well for me. Most of the corals have new growth now that they have been clipped. I'll have to go take some pictures.

 

[1fishkeeper]

Yes some picture updates would be great so everyone can see the before and after of this test.

 

[91yota]

same here with the growth... i do have a couple of pieces that are still being stubborn though

 

[cashyboy]

This is common in coral as well as plants, when something is broke off it sends alot of its energy to repair it which is where the excellerated growth and healing comes from. Sometimes when you cut a tip it will turn into 2 branchs where htere was just on.

 

[gregod]

ok, who's got updates? any pics?

 

[dwilly]

I don't have any pics right now, but it appears that 4 of the 5 corals i clipped (less than 1/4") are dying. One is OK, but i lost the blue tips on that one. I wish I hadn't read this post,
slow growth was better than the corals dying. I'm sure there's something else to it, but I don't know what. My param's are good - sal=1.025, calcium=440, alk=11, mag=1260, nitrates=0. (all Salifert test kits). I do 10 gl water changes weekly, and i clean the rocks w/ a turkey baster before every change. 75 gl tank w/ 30 gl sump, 6 x 54 Tek t5's, about 45x flow from powerheads and a sea swirl. This tank set up 16 months.

 

[IFbettas]

I doubt that the corals are dieing because you snipped the tips. Maybe they weren't healthy in the first place. What is you phosphate level?

 

[dwilly]

I can't measure the phosphates, I only have hobby grade test kits, they always show 0. There's no bad algae, so I'm not sure how else to tell. All of the corals that are dying were in the tank between 6 and 10 months prior to the cutting. They could have been sick, I guess, they did have good color and good polyp extension, just very slow growth (I didn't clip any of the ones that were growing well).