What You Need to Know About Coral Frags in a Saltwater Aquarium

Perhaps you’ve decided to get into the hobby of coral fragging or already bought your saltwater aquarium, there’s nothing to fuss about. And in your surfing to probably purchase a coral frag, the chance is that you’ve seen the term tossed around time after time. Have you ever wondered what it is, truly?

What is a Coral Frag?

Simply put, fragging is the process of breaking off, cutting a “mother colony” into fragments. Reefers consider frags to be the best choice for them since it is less expensive. This fact explains why it’s very common among hobbyists. Moreover, they enjoy cultivating and growing a handful of polyps into a larger coral.

However, when it is mature, it’s no longer referred to as a frag.

How do you go about fragging corals?

Proven to be the secret of reefers, fragging coral helps hobbyists grow their tanks. This strategy helps them acquire some of the corals that grow best for them. You may be blown away when you try fragging.

Fragging isn’t the same as ‘breeding’ corals. Coral fragging contains equal parts of reef gardening and proliferation. In the same way, you prune the branches of a tree to get the desired shape, cutting back corals keeps them in shape in your tank.

Commonly, the goal behind fragging is to increase the number of colonies in a saltwater aquarium. It’s a safe method that helps effectively splits one colony into several parts called frags.

Tools for the Job

Successful coral propagation through fragging is made easier with some common tools, including:

• Razorblade, scalpel, or other fine-edged cutting tools
• Stainless steel scissors or wire cutters
• Screwdriver or chisel

For more advanced or larger projects, more significant equipment will come in handy, such as:

• Bone cutters
• Rotary tool
• Band saw

Is Fragging out coral worth the effort?

The good news about fragging your parent frag colonies into smaller is that you can go to sell them in stores or online. With this, you can save lots of money by doing what you love most. And once you become a pro, you can up the price you sell the frags. This is because you can experiment with fragging even harder corals – the harder the corals, the money you can make from them.

Popular types of coral to frag

What’s even more fun than adding some live corals to your new salt aquarium? No doubt, watching them survive in the habitat you’ve provided for them is satisfactory.

There are several different species of hard corals, but the two major categories are the large polyp stony (LPS) and soft polyp stony (SPS). Generally, the LPS are larger calcareous corals and have larger fleshy polys than the SPS corals. As expected, these two types of saltwater corals require varying care.

While these are the two major classifications of hard coral, the distinctive difference is in their sizes.

Examples of LPS are the following:

• Alveopora
• Cynarine
• Favia
• Favites
• Galaxea
• Goniopora
• Montipora
• Platygyra
• Scolymia
• Tubastrea
• Turbinaria
• Heliofungi (Plate Coral)
• Wellsophyllia

Examples of SPS are the following:

• Bird of Paradise
• Blue Chalice
• Blue-Green Polyp
• Frogskin Acropora
• Mint Pavona
• Orange Satosa
• Pink Stylophora
• Vivid Tricolor Acropora
• Red Montipora Palawanesis

There are hundreds of more corals you can get. There are too many types of each category, that it is nearly impossible to mention them here.