Tips on fragging pipe organ coral

[jgunnell]

Does anyone have some advise for how best to frag pipe organ coral? I've tried to break it off by hand several times, but the stuffs so fragile, it just wants to crumble. I have about two softball size pieces that are starting to overgrow some button polyps and that whole general side of my 35g Red Sea Max. It's attached in several places to a main rock in my reef tank. If that whole rock comes out, it's disaster city ahead.

Thanks for any input!:up:

 

[tokejr]

jgunnell;390300 wrote: Does anyone have some advise for how best to frag pipe organ coral? I've tried to break it off by hand several times, but the stuffs so fragile, it just wants to crumble. I have about two softball size pieces that are starting to overgrow some button polyps and that whole general side of my 35g Red Sea Max. It's attached in several places to a main rock in my reef tank. If that whole rock comes out, it's disaster city ahead.

Thanks for any input!:up:

This is gonna be a little hard to explain, but I fragged the pipe organ by going from the top down, then scrape the (very fragile) mat of the area I wanted to frag. It certainly doesn't form a mat like zoanthid or anthelia, but if you work from top down and get underneath the base, it does come off without breaking into a gazillion pieces.

You really need to cut, then get under the base, pulling it off the rock at the same time with a sharp knife. Do it in small pieces or it breaks up.

 

[jgunnell]

Thanks, i'll try that. I kept trying to go under and up, thinking I could somehow "pry" it out using a butter knife.

 

[schwaggs]

I used a saw to cut the mass from top to bottom. You really want to keep the tubes as whole as possible. I think I read somewhere that the live animal goes quite a ways down the tube.