Tree Leather Propagation

[Photosnowman]

I have some tree leather coral in my 24 gallon nano cube that looks to be doing great. I heard I can cut a piece off and have it grow on another base. I apologize for my ignorance and lack of vocabulary in this matter but any advice would be greatly appreciated. Or if anybody can direct me to some literature I can read up.

[ReefWreak]

It's better if you can ID the coral first. Check out places like LiveAquaria.com or other sites to see if you can get an ID of the coral there. Maybe a local store to you has the book Aquarium Corals by Eric Borneman, and that would certainly help you I.D. the coral. Once you ID it, it'll be much easier for us to suggest how to properly frag it and how well it does through fragging.

FWIW, I believe that Kenya Tree corals, and maybe some other Tree leather/softies have droplet colonies that drop onto the nearby rocks or substrate, off of the main colony, and that's how they propagte. I've fragged my cabbage coral by just cutting off a leaflet of it and then people just rubber band it or sew it down to a rock and it grows to the rock.

[skeeter-doc]

both of you are right, many soft corals can just be cut and attached to a new substrate, rock, plug, whatever, and both will continue to grow, in the correct conditions

[dustin323]

Yes you can cut a piece off of it, using sharp sissors or a razor blade. Then you need to attach it to somehting, like rubble rock or plug, or substrate.

Multiple ways to do this. With softies you can't glue the coral to the new surface. So instead you can take the piece & new base & put a piece of mesh around it to hold it down & secure the mesh at the rock, etc with a rubber band. You can also use a rubber band to directly hold down the coral to the rock. There are various other ways also. It can take anywheres from a couple of days to a couple of weeks for a softie to attach.

[deep6er]

Is it not true that when you cut softies they release a mild toxin in the water? If this is true doing this in a 24 g might be bad. I would try small branches first just to see if your tank can handel it.