BREAKING STICKS
Heehee... the most common endeavers of coral fragmentation to date have largely been with digitate stony corals like Acropora and Montipora digitata... finger Porites, etc.
And to date, the most common way of fixing these frags to a substrate as been to glue, epoxy, insert (into a hole) or otherwise position the finger of a frag in an UPRIGHT position like a planted tree.
Yet do consider how unnatural this is. Can you imagine how many frags created on the reef by various water, weather/storm or animal damage... actually sink and settle - voila! - in a planted an upright position? Ahhh... not many, if any
More importantly, as it pertains to optimizing fragmentation techniques... the vertical orientation of a frag severely handicaps the potential for growth that accumulates total mass overall.
You have heard perhaps of other means for optimizing growth for mass? See my article index for links to an older Reefkeeping.com article on suspension growth of corals... there are some threads here on RC too from over one year ago on the same subject. You can grow more mass faster by suspending a coral on string since the colony will get more water flow all ways around and more light (refracted off sand and aquarium walls/substrates to the underside of the coral). But indeed... few folks will have the space or the desire to string corals.
So addressing the typical keeping of frags on substrates, let's look at an example:
Imagine a 2"/5cm single branch frag of Acropora.
"Planted" in an upright and vertical position, the axial tip of the branch continues to get the best light and water flow and grows the fastest.
But do you know what's better than a nice little fast growing axial corallite? Several of them: Lay the frag down horizontally.
Laying down horizontally... that 2" frag now has tens of secondary corallites now exposed to better water flow and light (especially) for being out from under the "shadow" of the vertical orientation. On this horizontal branch you will get at least several new branches that will each grow at the same or better pace than the single axial branch of a vertically fixed branch.
But do you know what's better than several new branches growing from a horizontal 2" frag? Two times the number of branches! And we get this by simply splitting the branch in half bilaterally (like a bananna split). Thus... we get 4-6 new branches off of both pieces laying down horizontally with their cut sides face down... instead of just several from the whole uncut branch laying down horizontally.
But do you know what's better than 4-6 new branches off of a bilaterally split coral frag? 20+ branches! And we get this by instead sawing the 2"/5 cm frag into say five 10mm disks/wafers! (done with a thin wet tile saw blade or lapidary saw blade as some of you have seen Eric Borneman or myself do in frag workshops... see 2005 IMAC and/or MACNA DVDs).
Each wafer of stony coral can be placed on a new hard substrate with a dab of glue and the topside cut edge will be stimulated to cover with new tissue and form at least several (if not more) branches in the process.
So comparing the growth on the same 2"/5cm Acropora frag in a single month between:
-vertical frag with single axial tip
-horizontal frag with several new branches
-split horizontal frag with 2X several branches
-4-5 10mm wafer cuts of the frag which each produce several+ branches
... the productivity is remarkable.
What great differences in the total amount of mass (and ultimately salable/tradable) corals produced!
This is the sort of mindful examination of our techniques we must continue to do as we collectively advance the hobby
Let's use this thread as one small place to add ideas and discussion about improving coral propagation techniques.
With kind regards, Anthony