Hot and Heavy Topic of the Week!

[jimsflies]

It should make you want to post your point of view but not attack. I feel like if you have to aggressively defend your point of view and not scientifically (let's face it, nothing is scientific as of yet, just observations by different people) or with common sense, then you are insecure about what you believe in.

So, would everyone please tell me this: Why do you keep small frags or small colonies and not let your frags grow into large colonies? Why would you frag a small frag? What is your thoughts when you frag a small frag? If you do it is it because you want to share? Make your money back? Like the look? Think it makes your coral grow faster? Let's get this back on track so we can see each other's points of view. I wanted to post on this smaller forum bc I believe people are nicer here vs. a huge forum where things can get out of hand very quickly.

I don't think anyone has been less than civil as was stated earlier. While I welcome a spritely debate, these issues do tend to polarize the community. We can talk about being civil all we want, but I see the fall out in the chatbox, buying and selling forums, and sponsor forums. I now cringe every time I see someone post a frag pack with some smaller collector corals in it, because there always seems to be negative comments in the chat and often in the selling thread itself. I think its important that we and others realize this and do our best to not let the debate in these threads negatively influence how we interact with each other in other areas of the site.

I think the Hot and Heavy Topics also need a wide berth in terms of getting off topic in order to explore various avenues. I am in regular contact with the mod staff and if necessary we are capable of righting the ship. They have my full confidence and appreciation for the work they do.

As was implied, I don't think asking for examples of small frags grown into colonies was off topic...even though I was told twice it was. I'm not sure what the person asking the question was hoping to see, but it seemed like a good question since survival rates were being questioned and the ability to grow a single polyp frag into a colony was in doubt. The photos that were posted shows the diversity of hobbyists and what they are able to accomplish in the hobby. Great job to @schminksbro and @MyNemesis on growing all those polyps out...you guys definitely inspired me with those photos.

Further, I don't think the growout contest discussion was off topic either. The contest was designed to help provide some relevant data on survivability of frags, and how various lighting and flow stacked up in growing out Z&P's. Here is one of several posts of mine during the contest...just in case you have doubts regarding my intentions with the contest:

A lot of us have lost the lunars, myself included. Even though winning may be a less probable, I still think tracking the remaining frags and how they are doing may help us figure out how to better grow Z&P's. I think if everyone but a couple drop out of the contest, the comparative benefit of the contest will be lost.

To my knowledge, grow outs on this scale are rarely attempted. I am disappointed that we only had complete data on two of the participants. Unfortunately it makes it a difficult to draw major conclusions. However, as I stated earlier...one conclusion is that Justin and Russ proved that it is possible to grow out small frags into larger ones (in case there was any doubt).

While not completely scientific, the community growout concept can provide us with valuable information on keeping zoanthids and palys. During the growout discussion tangent, the idea of comparing small frags to colony survival came up. I plan to have a future forum activity that will be designed to do just that.

I guess for me, the benefit of having these types of hot and heavy discussions is the tangental discussions that result often can spur other ideas and things we haven't thought of. I don't think that either side is going to change the other's opinion on the core issue.