(Reprinted from Marine Fish Monthly March 1997, with some minor changes/corrections to update it.)
By, Tom Miller
Last month we talked about tank raised marine aquarium fish. Although most of you didn't rush right out and buy green water planktonic algae and rotifers to grow and feed newly hatched fish larvae, you still probably want some tank raised fish now. I hope you'll track them down. They're well worth it! Last month I failed to mention that in addition to tank raised fish, snails, corals, clams, and live rock, The Aquatic WildLife Company in Tennessee also has valonia (bubble algae) eating crabs and just what we've all been waiting for: a reef safe nudibranch that eats aptaisia!!! Yes, aptaisia, those pesky little glass anemones that multiply and sting your corals. You can order any of these items direct, but if you and other hobbyists in your area would like to see all of these items for sale in your home town, be SURE to give their name and #'s to your favorite pet store(s): Phone 1-423-559-9000 or Email to AquaWild@aol.com. Your pet shop will also be interested to know that they also provide a full range of wild caught species that aren't tank raised yet. John Walch (and Dana Riddle)assures me they are collected and shipped using only proper and reef friendly methods. If you can get a good pet store to bring in quality tank raised and wild livestock and subscribe to AMDA practices, you'll definitely have a top notch reef store! Be aware that some store owners don't want to change.
Last month I also mentioned that my gorgeous bristle worm eating Arabian dotty-backs (also available through the above company) had spawned! I caught the egg cluster and finished the last few days of hatch out time in a tall container with air bubbler and had a good hatch out rate, but since I'm inexperienced in the fish breeding field I lost all the larval fish by day 11. I now know a bit more of how to prevent this and am just waiting to catch another egg cluster. They've spawned 3 more times since and the male seems to enjoy a scrambled egg breakfast a few days later. I'm still working on this problem and may have to move them to their own breeder tank so I can keep a better eye on things and feed him better while he "guards" the eggs.
This month we'll cover how to propagate or make cuttings of your own soft corals and mushroom or disk anemones. Soft corals are the ones that do not grow a heavy calcium carbonate skeleton at their base like stony corals which do and therefore build reefs. Some soft corals do have calcium spicules which do not remain long after the coral dies. You can cut pieces from existing soft corals and attach them to base rock or live rock right at your own kitchen table or counter, then return them to your reef aquarium to watch them attach and grow.
For those of you that are into gardening this sounds just like making cuttings from existing plants to grow new plants. It is very similar and many refer to this as coral reef gardening. I have found that many reef hobbyists are "into" other visual or creative art and science hobbies like astronomy, photography and especially gardening. If you like making things, you'll love coral propagation. I myself am into gardening, especially rose gardening. Making cuttings is commonplace to a rosarian, but my rose cuttings, like my coral cuttings, often didn't work out until I learned some "tricks" to make most of them grow and thrive. In the northern Utah climate where I live, I am finished with rose gardening some time in October each year when freezing weather abruptly ends the local growing season. But not for coral growing. I can keep going year round! The only problem is that once you get going on your new coral gardening project, it could become addictive and you may find yourself getting a bit scissor happy at times. In extreme cases you may find that you've cut down a once large show piece flower animal (coral) into a small stump with only a little remaining growth because you've made numerous new coral cuttings to trade with friends in perhaps several counties. You stare at the scraggly remains of your once gorgeous showpiece and wonder what ever possessed you. Perhaps about 6 months to a year down the road you'll visit the reefs of the friends you donated to, sold to or traded with and only then will it hit you: Just like a rose bush, your once beautiful showpiece coral has now grown back in splendor and is also duplicated in many other reef aquariums too. This is a rewarding feeling, seeing clones of your favorite corals in lots of tanks. The coral cuttings you traded for have now blossomed and are an added bonus. And if those bonuses aren't enough, there's one more benefit. If your favorite coral dies, you can now get a new start from numerous sources! The propagation techniques that hobbyists have developed are now starting to benefit nature where damaged reefs (from fishing, pollution, etc.) are now starting to be "replanted".
Is it money that motivates you? Some people have turned coral farming into a side business out of their homes. My first experience with propagation was when one of my coral- like mushroom anemones (actinodiscus - a type of corallimorpharian) detached from a rock on its own and drifted to the bottom of my reef tank. To my surprise, it didn't die! It puffed back up and attached to a new rock within a week and eventually sprouted new mushrooms around it. But even more surprising to me was that the little nub of flesh it left behind on the rock it detached from soon grew into another mushroom! How could this be? I later found out that I had simply discovered what others had known for years. Meantime I got up enough courage to get a pair of scissors (while my wife wasn't watching - they WERE her good sewing scissors) and stick them into my tank and cut off another mushroom to get it to attach where I wanted it to. I snipped the disk off and brown slimy goo oozed out. It briefly stuck to "my" scissors before floating off. I put the mushroom on a rock nearby and it kind of stuck, for a little while. It ended up floating off resettling and attaching where it preferred. Sure enough, the stub that I cut it from regrew a new mushroom within weeks! Dollar signs started flashing. I could just about start multiplying mushrooms (and dollars) inside my head: Start with 10 and double them to 20 in one month. Double this each month for ten months and you get: 10x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2 = 10,240 mushrooms! I could start selling mushroom rocks with 5-10 on each for maybe $10-$30 a rock. Selling 500 - 1000 mushroom rocks a month might not be so bad!
I soon found that the mushrooms didn't cooperate this easily. They didn't always double as quickly as I wanted them to and they didn't want to attach where I wanted them to. To make matters worse I found that protozoan infections can strike a fresh cutting and wipe it out and even its healthy neighbors too. I started looking for helpful info and found it little by little. Not everyone was willing to share and most people had no experience with coral propagation. I also experimented (and reinvented the wheel in many cases) to find solutions to making mushroom and other soft coral cuttings stick and grow. Now hundreds of coral cuttings later and enough failures behind me to feel like I've learned something, I'm ready (I think) to share with you what I've learned about captive coral gardening.
Sharing information is very important to make it possible for the newcomer to get off to a running start so that he or she can soon contribute their own new ideas and findings. Also, sharing information is critical to furthering the art and science of coral farming to preserve the the world's coral reefs and the reef hobby. We are now at a milestone turning point where the coral reefs now need the reef hobby more than the reef hobby needs the coral reefs. I thought I'd never say that, or am I still a few months too early? Hobbyists are at the cutting edge of developing the required techniques to "replant" reefs. This isn't all serious hobbyists are doing. Concerned hobbyists are promoting reef conservation awareness by showing off their reef aquariums to the public and speaking up for conservation and practicing what they preach, like supporting stores that are members of AMDA (American Marine Dealers Association). AMDA supports responsible care and handling of marine fish, corals and rock as well as responsible, reef friendly harvesting and capture. Purchase of propagated fish, corals and live rock are also highly encouraged. We've come a long way but the journey isn't over. More propagation techniques can be developed and perfected. You can help by experimenting and sharing your results with others. There is no need to start blindly as I did. There is now enough readily available info to get you off to a flying start right from the beginning. John Walch of The Aquatic WildLife Co. and too many others to name have directly or indirectly provided much of the propagation information in this and the following articles.
Maybe you don't know anyone to trade with or sell cuttings to, but you would like to make cuttings to spread around your own tank or to stock a second reef tank, perhaps in your bedroom so you can go to sleep to the "white noise" of water rippling and wake up to the beautiful sights of a tropical reef. Soft corals are usually easy enough to propagate that you can spread them around as you please. And some will just spread on their own. Let's give it a try, maybe you'll find that you have a "salty thumb", the equivalent of a gardener's green thumb. Let's look at some of the more prominent ways to make cuttings of the "flower animals".
Some of the basic tools you'll need are: very sharp scissors and/or new razor blades to cut off coral pieces, base rock or live rock to attach the new cuttings to and something to attach the new cuttings with. Rubber bands, fishing line, tooth picks and super glue gels are some of the basic bonding media and most corals can be attached easily with just these. OK, class over, article finished and now you can go make new corals, right? Well, if you're innovative you can in many cases, but there are always little problems you'll tend to encounter. The new corals don't always stay fastened until they can attach to the new rock on their own which is often but not always one to two weeks. Certain corals tend to get irritated when restricted by rubber bands, fishing line or a tooth pick stuck through them. When a coral is irritated some resist attaching to the new rock and sometimes turn into slime or goo as protozoans attack and eat dead and decaying material from the cut. Once this infection starts it keeps going until it consumes the live part of the cutting too. Mushroom anemones win the award for "most finicky" when it comes to being restricted. LeRoy Headlee and I have gotten mushroom anemones to attach by stringing them with a sewing needle onto fishing line and wrapping them onto rocks and also by skewing them onto rocks with a tooth pick. But I lose more to infections when I restrict them in these ways. Few people have had success with super gluing slimy disk anemones to rock. They are always expanding and contracting (fleshy corals do this too) which helps them detach and get away. LeRoy has good luck when VERY loosely wrapping coarse bridal veil (available at most fabric stores) around a rock with a few mushrooms between the veil and the rock. If you wrap it too tight and it touches the mushrooms it will irritate them and delay or prevent attachment.
Last month I promised to share my recipe for "Easy No-Bake Coral Cookies" but I'll have to keep you going with this "cliff-hanger" until next month. We'll now continue with basically smooth actinodiscus or mushroom anemones. The first and most common propagation method is to stick them in a depression in a rock or in a quiet cove with rocks on the bottom where they won't get whisked away in the current but can quietly attach. They will sometimes stick where you put them. You may spend a lot of time chasing them down and "replanting" them before they decide to attach. Start by using a sharp pair of scissors to snip off the mushroom cap in one quick clean cut. Once the scissors touch the mushroom it will start retracting. If you don't cut it quickly enough you may have to wait hours or until tomorrow for it to come back out enough to cut it off cleanly.
But how exactly DO you get a mushroom to attach where YOU want it to when they seem to attach where THEY want to? Here's the trick: Anytime you are working with a coral (especially disk anemones) that is finicky and wants to attach where and how it wants, and also tends to "slime out" on you due to protozoan attack when restricted, just fill a glass bowl (Correl Ware works great for me - but my wife keeps wondering where all the cereal bowls are disappearing to) with a thin layer of pea sized CaribSea aragonite (or try small sea shells or chips of inland mined hard aragonite rocks). Put your mushrooms in this "gravel bowl" in a quiet corner of the aquarium where they won't get whisked away in the current. Cover the bowl with netting (coarse wedding veil) only if necessary. You'll find that the unrestricted mushrooms now attach to the gravel much quicker and slime outs are reduced dramatically. After they are very firmly attached you can take them out of the aquarium and use super glue gel to glue the pebble or shell (with mushroom attached) to the rock you really wanted to attach it to in the first place. Often mushrooms attach to two or more pebbles at the same time. Don't worry, you can take advantage of this opportunity by dividing the mushroom with a razor blade so that a portion of it remains attached to each of the pebbles. These partial mushrooms regrow the missing portion quickly and now you have more! Try not to get super glue on the mushroom itself when gluing the pebble to your rock or it might detach from irritation. Also make sure the mushroom has been attached a few weeks for reduced chance of detachment from super glue irritation.
Another variation is to cut off the disk and then quarter it by cutting it in half twice right on a plate with a razor blade . Each quarter will regrow a new one. Just leave the mouth on one of the quarters, the other three will grow new mouths! When quartering you will notice a lot of extra goo emitted from the mushroom's cut edges as it shrinks. If this goo isn't removed and if you quarter a lot of them at one time, you are begging for a protozoan infection "slime out" of the whole batch. So, here's what to do. After cutting the mushrooms from their stalks in your aquarium, put them in a glass bowl or on a plate with some tank water to keep them from drying out. Mushrooms will be permanently damaged or die if left completely out of water to dry out for much longer than 5 minutes - keep them wet. REAL soft corals are much hardier out of water. After quartering them, swirl them in the bowl of water with a wooden tooth pick to make them shrink and put off all the goo they are capable of. The goo then can be removed with the tooth pick and wiped on a paper towel. A turkey baster (buy a separate one and label it or your wife will be very unhappy with you) can be very helpful for handling, moving and capturing loose mushrooms in the tank, bowl or plate. Now return the cut up mushrooms to the aquarium and into the bowl of gravel where they will attach. Another handy tip to help avoid protozoan infection is to give the mushroom pieces a 1 minute bath in a quart of tank water with 2 or 3 drops of strong iodine solution from the drug store: Iodine, potassium iodide and alcohol.
Let's not give up on mushrooms just yet. There's one more method that is quite handy. You can easily cut off just an edge or one side from the mushroom's disk then cut it into a few small pieces and put these in your bowl of gravel to attach. The reason I bring this up is that myself and many others have had problems with large hairy or bumpy corallamorpharia such as rhodactis or elephant ear mushrooms. Cutting the whole disk off of one large hairy variety, that friends and I tried, resulted in slime outs in 5 out of 5 propagation attempts! This particular one must have been extra tasty to protozoans - which can be easily seen through a microscope at 50+ power. Later I tried cutting strips off the edges of this and one other large knobby variety. These were cut into several small pieces and put in the gravel bowl. They resist sliming very well this way but end up quite small at first. Ricordea can be chipped off a rock using a cold chisel. This leaves it attached to a thin piece of rock. Next, quarter the ricordea and underlying rock chip with a knife then glue each piece to a new rock.
Next we'll make cuttings of leather corals. We'll start with sarcophyton the leather mushroom coral. Leather mushroom corals do best under good lighting, but not extremely bright, and good water flow, but not too strong. A cutting of these corals can sometimes get attacked by protozoans too. Just like mushroom anemones, irritation can worsen the possibility of slime out. But fortunately you can put these in a medium to med-high water flow while they attach and heal. This dramatically reduces protozoan infections!
Leather mushroom corals can often be glued directly, skin to rock. Thick super glue gels or Super Reef Gel (available through Mark Barnes at ReefGel@aol.com) - it works the best of all the gels I've tried) seem to often work well in gluing coral skin directly to rock. Try to glue it so that at least some of the coral's skin is pressed against the rock with no glue between it and the rock for best attachment. Although, rock to rock glueing works best. Gluing can be done out of water or under water. Nothing in aquariums has been observed to be harmed by super glue. Out of water, fumes can be harmful to humans - use ventilation. To glue under water, put glue on one piece while out of the water then submerse and immediately press it onto the spot where you want it to stick and hold it 15 seconds. Sometimes it doesn't stay stuck - the glue heats up and forms a hardening shell where it contacts water. Just reglue until it does stick. Also, you can get better sticking power if you stick it on the rock then pull it apart a little then stick it back together again, or just stick it together then twist or turn it. This creates a stringing action with the super glue which helps it set up. I've even stuck tubes of super glue under water to spot weld edges of leather corals and others that weren't attaching properly.
One type of leather mushroom coral is quite touchy, the beautiful pacific yellow leather mushroom. It bruises easily just from handling it (maybe just from looking at it). It then decays into a pile of goo. You must use very sharp scissors or a new razor blade to make a clean cut off an outer edge then most carefully move it to a gravel bowl in your tank. This is best done all under water in your aquarium. Give it plenty of time (2 weeks or more) to heal and firmly attach to the gravel, then very carefully super glue the attached gravel onto a rock.
The more common tan and brown leather mushrooms are very easy to make cuttings of. You can cut pieces off the outer mushroom disk and sew them onto rock. Or you can cut the whole mushroom cap off and attach it to another rock. Put both parts in good current for this method or you could loose them. Still other aquarists have cut the whole coral in half (thirds or quarters), top to bottom and both halves regrow the other half. LeRoy sometimes cuts the disk into 6 or 8 pie shaped segments and lets them heal while still attached to the central portion of the coral. After about two weeks they have healed well and he cuts every other one off and attaches them to new rocks with super glue or lightly securing with a rubber band. After another week or two he cuts off the remaining pieces, leaving just the stem and central part of the disk which regrows outward again. When making major cuts like this the coral will retract its polyps for several days so don't be alarmed. Just keep it in good current while it heals. You can then, if you want, shave off the polyped mushroom cap with a razor blade at a 1/8 inch thickness and then sew this onto a rock. By only cutting off the top 1/8 inch you will get very quick polyp regrowth on the top of the stem as opposed to the slower regrowth from the other method of cutting off an inch or two of stem with the full sized mushroom cap. The method that gives me the best results and almost never a loss is just trimming off the edges about an inch wide around the whole disk all at once, then cutting this into squares which I sew onto rocks. I lace the needle and fishing line lengthwise right through the coral fragment and tie it to the rock. I often get these cuttings to attach best using fishing line rather than super glue. A word of caution about overuse of phosphate remover granules or beads for algae control. Don't leave them in too long especially around sarcophyton. I've lost several sarcophyton cuttings just from leaving phosphate remover in too long. A day or two at a time and only as needed is best. New sarcophyton cuttings are already stressed enough from being cut and the polyps will stay retracted several days. Phosphate remover is fine but excess will keep them retracted until they rot! Some people claim that sarcophyton closes up right when they add phosphate removers but I haven't had this happen. I think it's because I rinse it WELL in tap water right before I add it.
This info should get you off to a good start at becoming a coral farmer or gardener, which ever you choose. We'll continue and finish the "how to" of making soft coral cuttings next month. But for now I hope you'll dive right in. Your assignment is to at least try a small cutting or two before then. It's very easy if you just follow a few simple precautions to avoid protozoan problems which are the only real obstacle to success. Try it. You'll like it! Send any questions and comments to me in care of Marine Fish Monthly, and by the way, thanks for the great response to the previous articles on the Lee Chin Eng natural reef keeping method and variations. I answer all letters with SASE's included. I'll answer one of them in this column next month. Include your phone number just incase. You can also send me a message on the internet now at EZreef@yahoo.com if you'd like. And also remember: "Keep your feet on the ground and your head in the star polyps." I think it might have been Kasey Kasem who said this??? That about does it for this month, so remember your home work assignment and I'll sea you next month.
Tom Miller