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Various Workshops

Various Fragging Workshops

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I attended 3 fragging workshops while at MACNA.

The first one I attended was given by Anthony Calfo and covered procedures used for salvaging corals that may be sick or dieing. His tools of choice were a good wood chisel, dremel tool with stainless steel bits and a sidecutting bit, a wire saw, boning shears, coral cutters, scalpal and surprisingly, a wet tile saw! He showed how branching corals, such as torch, frogspawn, will sometimes make little nub like buds that will intermittently polyp out. His suggestion was to scrape them off with a chisel and place them in rubble, they will grow into new coral heads in just a few months. He cut an anemone in half and within the hour, it had sealed its wound and had its tentacles extended. He said that with a well conditioned anemone, this could be done quite often.

He also talked about how he paid for all the expenses of his coral farm, plus 2 new vans from his 2, 240 gallon tanks of xenia. That is just amazing. He also recommended species tanks when fragging for the trade. Heavy feeding, heavy water changes and an Ozone Generator were high on the list of "musts".

I honestly did not stay for much of Eric Borneman's workshop. The place was packed and visibility was difficult.

The last workshop I attended was a fragging demonstration by Justin Credebel. He has some very forward thinking ideas and is currently workinng with the grafting of like species together. such as cutting two different color brain corals and then gluing them close together so you end up with a half/half color mixture. He is doing extensive research on the care and propagtion of goniopora corals. I was fortunate enough to get two pieces of one that he had fragged. As far as tools, he is very fond of the wet tile saw as well, but that could be because he is working with LPS corals alot. I will mention that both he and Anthony Calfo covered the importance of latex gloves and eyewear when working with the corals.

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