Acropora Growth & Frag Recovery Time

We might not be letting our Acropora coral frags fully recover after cutting them off colonies in our reef tanks. It's not as easy as just looking at them - complex internal changes are also taking place while it recovers from the damage of being cut off the main coral colony. Even the cleanest cuts through the branches of our coral need a month, maybe more, to really truly recover.
When fragging your reef aquarium corals, give them time to really recover. The people you're giving frags to will thank you! I'm sure you'll agree - if you had the choice between a freshly cut frag and one that has had a month or two to encrust onto the plug - you'll pick the one that has encrusted every time.
Li, Y.; Han, T.; He, C.; Lu, Z. Axial Canal Regulates the Processes of Coral Branching and Calcareous Transportation in Acropora. Preprints 2021, 2021060340 (doi: 10.20944/preprints202106.0340.v1).
www.preprints.org/manuscript/...
Abstract
In Acropora, the complex canals in a coral colony connect all polyps into a holistic network to collaborate in performing biological processes, while axial canal is the largest canal amongst the network and distributes at the center of a coral branch. However, previous studies indicated that, in the non-radial symmetry transport system of Acropora, axial canal do not play a major role in the transport of hydroplasm, and the action of axial canal in coral growth is still obscure. In this study, we reconstructed six Acropora muricata samples by high resolution micro-computed tomography to investigate the growth patterns of axial canals during the processes of new branch forming and truncated branch rebuilding. We found that the axial canal of a new branch is transformed from a calice and the polyps in the new branch are budded from the polyp in the axial canal. Meanwhile, the axial canal can transport the calcareous skeletons to rebuild the tip of a truncated branch, which represents as the change in the diameter of axial canal and calcareous deposition/reduction in it. This work indicate the regulation of axial canal in the growth processes including budding, branching, and mineralising of an Acropora colony.
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[@JayCo0o]

Love your videos. I am from Germany

[@vascojardim6703]

Great video as usual. Really sorry about your corals. It would be really interesting to hear your thoughts on why/what happened, and your process to get back in shape. Thanks!

[@ReefMan]

Thanks! I did a few videos on it - short version is a pump burned up in my sump, leading the copper and other metal contamination. Then the die off triggered algae, which increased the die off by irritating coral it grew on, and then dinos started. It's slowly recovering, and I hope to start adding frags again in a few more weeks.

[@deebKen]

Very informative thank you!!

[@rickb7242]

Makes me sad to see what happened to your corals. I had a crash happen twice in a year . was very defeating but I couldn't let it beat me out of the hobby . Hope it all comes around for you and everything starts thriving again.

[@InappropriateReefer]

Great info, thank you!

[@ReefMan]

I thought it was really interesting!

[@tylersimjingxuan6109]

Was scrolling my feed and I saw acropora skeleton on acropora growth title! Scared the hell out of me!

[@Messier87_M87]

I just made two frags the other day for the first time. One was a ORA ponape birds nest coral and the other was a branching hyndophora. Think I put to much glue at the base of hydnophora and I think it’s kind of stressed because I covered quite a bit of flesh on the bottom, which will probably die and have to regrow on top of the glue. I’ll have to make sure I have some epoxy handy next time. Very interesting video! Thanks for posting!

[@ReefMan]

I bet they'll recover from the super glue. It heats up when curing, and that can irritate the coral too. Good luck!

[@grzegorzstepien1399]

Hey Man. What's going on behind you in your tank? Its looks quite bad. Why It looks bad? What's going on mate? You had a beautifull sticks.

[@ReefMan]

Yea it's nearly a total loss. The fish are all doing fine, but right now it's basically just algae and dinos. Getting that under control and rebuilding..