Propagating SPS

[melev]

Whenever a small piece of SPS breaks off in your tank, if you have a propagation system running, that would be the perfect time to get the little piece and mount it to a small piece of rock rubble. That way you are growing out the little pieces which can be shared with others in the future once they've had some time to mature.

Each of us that has a propagation tank should really consider any opportunities like this to keep the species alive and promote it actively to others in the club.

I had a coral that was hugging another coral which was RTNing in my reef last week. That coral RTN'd all the way to the tip, and then the RTN spread to the secondary (hugging) coral, much to my disgust. So I endeavored to frag it to save the colony, which was a nice sized piece. In the process, a large 2" x 2" piece of SPS snapped off - :roll: -, hit the sink I was working in, and created 6 more tiny pieces.

All the pieces were put in my prop section until I could take the time to glue them to some rubble. A few nights ago, I got that done, and have about 8 frags growing from that one colony that was in distress.

The RTN continued to spread and I had to cut off even more, but my chances of keeping some of this coral alive has increased.

Hopefully some of you are doing the same, or considering it at this time. I'll add some pictures later.

 

[melev]

alt="">

 

[fish2morow]

I agree, anytime you have a coral in distress/RTNing it is possible to save portions of it. I try to frag any coral that starts RTNing as soon as it is noticed. I have been lucky enough to save at least a small part of any coral I have had this happen to.
Also make sure you frag it onto several pieces of rubble and not all onto one peice, this will give you a better chance of success. Keeping the new frags as separate (away from each other) as room will allow will also increase success rate.
All of this is from my experience and not proven to work but I have had some good success with it. I have also started using a coral dip from Kent marine that claims to help with distressed corals, just started using last week so I do not have any positive results to report yet but it does seem to help so far.

 

[Servo]

In my experience, when a piece starts to STN, you should break off as much as possible and tehn try to determine what may be the cause of your failures. Do you have AEFW's?, do you see small collections of eggs? Have your parameters fallen out of optimal range? Do you have a nitrate spike? Is your magnesium to low? Has your temperature fluctuated? Is a neighboring coral exhibiting allelopathy?

Sometimes, you may never find any "reason", but even in the best of scenarios, you may lose what could be some apoptosis or other cellular event. Fragging the coral into as many smaller pieces gives you the best chance for survival.

I had a large colony of A. Yongei that was touched by green star polyps. The coral slowly started to STN. I placed epoxy over the edge and that bought me about 48-72 hours, but only until I fragged off the unaffected heathy peices was I able to save the coral.