Suspension Coral Propagation
 

Is anyone out there doing any suspension coral propagation?
I keep reading about it and decided to give it a try.
This thread will be my log of the growth of the suspension propagation of these frags. I used a 24 inch piece of egg crate 2 squares wide to lay across the top of the tank and used some fishing line to suspend the frags from the eggcrate.

You will have to ignore all of the scratches in the glass!

LOL I thought those where bubbles from a long exposure.

I wish that they were just bubbles. :D
Too bad you can not buff out scratches in glass like you can with acrylic.

You can but it's a lot of work and you need to empty the tank out. 3M rubbing compound and a little muscle behind it would do the job.

I didn't know that a compound was made to remove scratches from glass. I would have to drain the tank completely because the scratches are pretty bad and it is the entire front and back panes that are covered in scratches. The scratches usually do not appear in my photos because the camera usually is focused beyond the scratches. Oh well. I'm not too worried about it though. :)

The best way to remove scratches from any glass is using a 600 grid wet/dry sandpaper untill the scratch is gone. Use it will the sandpaper is wet. Then follow with at least an 1000 grit sandpaper while wet to buff out the blurr that'll occur from you leveling out and removing the scratch. Then follow by the 3M rubbing compound (it's the equivalent of a 1500 grid wet sandpaper).

I have resurfaced my watch faces many a times this way when it get all scratched up... Terrible on watches. :rolleyes:

OK here is a better photo -

In the next few days I plan on trying this method with some digitata and some birdsnest. So far so good. The coral gets considerably more flow being suspended than it does being mounted.

Tell me more about your tank that you are using this on. What size, how much water flow, lighting, and what all types of corals do you plan on doining this with.

I have tried that a few years ago on buddys setup it works good as long as you remember to suspend the coral by a section that you plan on fragging off and to not put any true swimer fish in. always knocked the frags down. i would like to see a full tank shot if i can of your system.....

I am attempting the suspension propagation on my main tank which is 75 gallons. Flow consists of a tunze stream, maxijet powerhead, and a rio 2500 for the return (yes I know rio sucks and plan on upgrading pumps in the future). Lighting consists of 2x175 10K XM, 2x110 actinic vho, and 1 t5 actinic nova. I am just doing this for testing purposes to see if the growth rates can be increased. The fish in the system include a bicolor blenny, purple tang, flame angel, dusky jawfish, and a Diana's hogfish. None of the fish seem to even notice the frag in suspension.

I plan on trying this with various acros, a purple digitata, and a birdsnest frag. I suspect that the birdsnest frag will benefit the most from this method. I will try to get a full tank shot later today when the lights come on.

For those who are interested, here is an article by Anthony Calfo on suspension coral propagation.

Decided to try some pavona as well -

Here is a birdsnest frag that I used superglue to attach the fishing line. This branch was being shaded on the original colony.

Full Tank Shot w/ corals in suspension-

A bit off topic but here's one more -

Here is a 15 second video clip for those who are interested -
http://www.fragoutpost.com/movies/coral_suspension.avi

done it
 

ive done that and had some decent results one of my acros actually started growing up the fishing line that i used to suspend it from it seems to work well . the reason i tried it was mainly a space issue but it ended up working well ,the only reason i am not still doing it is now i have all the space i could ever need and more current but if you are lacking in those departments suspension is a good way to fix that problem

Suspension propping can be a great way to maximize the space not currently being utilized in the tank. I don't know why I haven't attempted this before now.