PICTURE OF THE WEEK 6/21/98
The purple corals in this aquarium are growing very fast and some of them will be cut soon. We frag the corals by using stainless steel tweezers. We grab the branch we want to remove and then we twist the branch until it pops loose. The tweezers work better for us than pliers because we drop less of the frags. If we are trimming a coral of more than one or two frags we often remove it from the water and work on it over a bowl of reef water. The Super glue we use allows us to remount the coral as soon as we are finished.
THE FRAGS CAN THEN BE SHIPPED ANYWHERE IN THE U.S. AND THEN THEY CAN BE GLUED IN THE NEW REEF. You can glue them to live rock underwater so they can be placed where you want them until you are ready to frag them.
REEF PICTURES SPONSORED BY REEF JANITORS THESE BRIGHT PURPLE SPS CORALS ARE THE TYPES THAT WE LOVE TO COLLECT. WE HAVE MANY STRAINS OF THESE CORALS AND THEY ARE STARTING TO GROW FASTER AS THEY GET LARGER.
The coral we are most excited about in the top picture is the small bright purple Pocilopora in the lower left corner. This is the brightest Pociloprora we have ever seen and it is growing very well. It will be great when it grows as large as the Pociloprora in upper middle of the picture:) WE NOW HAVE OVER 20 STRAINS OF PURPLE ACROPORA. Several of the corals are shown in these two pictures.
We are keeping these corals in reefs that have only VHO bulbs and IceCap ballasts. This time of year it nice to not have to fight the extra heat that comes from Metal Halide lights. The top picture shows the 150 gallon reef that has 8 - four foot 110 watt bulbs. The next picture shows Sally Jo's 55 gallon that has 4 VHO and 2 - 40 watt bulbs.
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