Hot and Heavy Topic of the Week!

[Jarred1]

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 have small colonies because I bought small frags and only had them for a small amount of time. I have bought small one or two polyp frags and only bought them because I truly liked them. I have not fragged them and they are growing at a decent pace. I would love to have a nice size rock covered in zoas, but right now I currently only have a rock covered in some neat palythoas.

[mallorieGgator]

Thanks Jarred- I'm there with you. My tank is still young so I have lots of frags in my tank. I have one real colony that has grown into some 200+ polyps but I bought it as a colony of about 75-90 polyps.

---------- Post added at 10:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:56 PM ----------



I don't see why people would have ill feelings over this thread. No one has been super nasty to each other like the other threads we have been in. I'm done defending myself for posting this. You can read why I posted it in my previous statements.

[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.

[mallorieGgator]

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:



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.

Very true about the tangents. I just worry about some of the tangents turning ugly, which is why I want to try to keep the thread on topic. I do agree that it is good that we take these topics and use them to brainstorm new ideas. That is how we all learn is to brainstorm with one another. I would like to see a thread dedicated to a mass growout of a certain polyp to see which grows faster so we can actually get some scientific proof. I actually thought that the frags grown out were impressive but to me I would still not buy a one polyp frag. That is just me.

[jimsflies]

I actually thought that the frags grown out were impressive but to me I would still not buy a one polyp frag. That is just me.

Only one of the frags was a single polyp...which had been dubbed the mystery frag, so it was actually a "bonus" with the contest frag pack. We kept the frag sizes were small for a couple reasons....one was to keep the contest affordable to get more participation. Another was to keep shipping costs as low as possible again to make the contest more affordable.

I will likely try to get another contest arranged...pulling it off was no easy task and would not have happened if it weren't for @Skyhigh and @sdavis43 .

I am considering the colony vs. frag comparison growout. It may not be a contest as much as it would be an experiment. I'm thinking we can probably get a sponsor to help us out with finding a suitable colony or two to use as the subject. We'll have to start another thread to figure out what we want to accomplish and how it would need to be carried out to meet our goals.

[Sir Patrick]

There was a trend of the 3, 4 and 5 polyp frags growing well over 3 times the polyps of the 1 and 2 polyp frags- and there were very few reports of losses from the larger polyp count vs. the small polyp counts.

This topic is the exact topic I was following the entire time the growout contest went on. I learned a lot about polyps during this contest. One of the biggest reasons I got in on it in the first place.

Most of my frags came from very small colonies, once they reached 12+ polyps, and I fragged 5+ heads when possible. I got great growth out of the 5 polyp frags vs. the original 3 or 4 polyp frags. I ended up getting some great growth over all this way.