Saturday, November 15, 2008

Clone

A while back I described my attempt at dividing a mushroom and my Colt coral. I had mixed results.

First the good news. The diving of the mushroom worked out well. The mushroom next to the shrimp in the picture below is the clone. All you need to do is slice off the disc and leave the stem. Place the disc on a new rock and hold it in place with some bridal netting from your local craft store. Wrap a rubber band around the netting to secure it. Let it sit there for 3 or 4 days until it attaches to the new rock. That's it. This was very easy to do provided you can hang on to the piece you cut. The first one I cut slipped away. Somewhere in my tank I may have another one growing.

From Paul's Reef


Here is another picture. You can see the clone above the parent colony.
From Paul's Reef


Now to the Colt coral. This didn't work out so well. I should only done one piece but I tried several. Each of these failed. The problem with the Colt coral is that it is too soft and slimy. The toothpicks I used to stab them and secure them in place eventually worked their way through the soft flesh of the coral. The coral would then float away. I also tried to loosely rubber band the pieces to a stone. No matter how loose I made the rubber band it eventually worked its way through the coral and it would float away. I'll have to do more research on this and try again. I would also like to figure out how to divide my Xenia. It's growing like crazy.