What on earth are frags and why do people keep talking about them? How do they work? What should you do with them? Are they the same corals as the coral you see in the shop and online? What are the benefits of frags? This quick blog is all about answering those questions and pointing you in the direction of where to get some.
Let's start with what are frags? Frags are just fragments of a larger coral, it's as simple as that. Corals reproduce in two ways, sexually and asexually. Sexual reproduction involves coral spawning where they produce eggs and sperm which are then released by different colonies across the reef at the same time in a 'spawning event' usually triggered by environmental events. The other way is asexual reproduction which is when coral polyps clone themselves and bud off to create new growth or they release and travel in the flow to establish new colonies on the reef elsewhere. The latter is seen less so in aquariums but isn't super rare; it's often why some reefers experience the same coral popping up all over their reef when they didn't place it there originally, this is almost always exclusively seen in well established mature reef tanks. The main type of reproduction we're interested in here though for the subject of 'frags' is asexual reproduction where the new polyps simply expand the size of the main coral. We as the reef keeper observe this as generic 'growth' and when a coral grows it gives us the opportunity to break off a piece to grow elsewhere as a new copy of the original coral. This frag is genetically exactly the same as the coral we've broken it off from because each polyp on the frag is an exact copy of the polyp it came from.
But how do they work when we buy them? The frags are often glued to frag plugs, tile or a bit of rubble and then left to 'grow out' or 'base out' or 'rest' depending on what term you want to use. They all basically mean the same thing though which is leaving the newly broken off piece of coral time to heal because when you frag a coral it's not guaranteed that the frag will initially survive. So to make sure that you as the frag buyer don't buy a frag that is going to just die on you suddenly its important that they've had that time to heal and settle. How do you tell if they've had time to heal? There are few quick and easy tells, the flesh around the cut edges has healed over and the white skeleton of the coral isn't showing, the frag is growing onto the frag plug or the frag is showing new growth upwards. Taking a freshly cut frag that hasn't had time to heal over is a big risk to you as the buyer so it's always worth having a look and making sure the frag is showing one of the three tells just mentioned. Anyway, you've found the frag you want and you're happy with it, what next? You get it home, acclimate and dip it as you would any other new addition and then you're free to place it on your rockwork. You have two choices here though, you can either fix the frag plug to the rockwork or you can remove the frag from the plug and place the frag directly onto the rock. The first option means you will be able to see the frag plug until the coral grows over which can take some time whereas the second option means you won't have to deal with the plug but you risk the coral dying because you're essentially re-fragging it and exposing its skeleton so it will have to heal over again. I personally break off the stem of the frag plug and then epoxy the frag plug with coral onto the rock work and just I put up with seeing the frag plug until the coral grows over. Everyone has their personal preference though so it's entirely up to you what you want to do.
So what are the benefits of frags? In my mind there are two main benefits, cost and aesthetic. Frags are always going to be cheaper to buy compared to buying the main coral colony because you are just buying a piece of it. This makes filling your aquarium with coral less costly but you are going to have to wait for them to grow into the big coral colonies that will fill out your rockwork. Which brings us onto the second benefit, aesthetic. If you buy a big coral colony you do get the instant big coral but it might always look like a big coral that you've placed on your rockwork. It may never look like a natural part of your reef. Now I'm not saying that this is always the case, you may be lucky or really skilled and place it in such a way on your rockwork that it instantly looks perfectly natural, plenty of reefers do! But if you have a frag and leave it to settle it will grow into your reef and the conditions which will often give it a more natural look as a 'part of your reef'.
Right then, we've covered what they are but where can you buy frags? You're in luck! We've set up a dedicated part of the Rock N Critters website just for frags! You can get it by navigating to the 'livestock' drop down and then selecting 'latest frags' or even easier just follow the link below;
CLICK HERE FOR LATEST FRAGS
If you want to view all of the frags for a certain type of coral, say SPS frags then select SPS Corals from the drop down menu and then on the left of the screen there is an option to filter by 'frag' or by 'colony'. Click 'frag' and it will display all the frags in the SPS section. You can do the same for LPS and softies. Keep and eye on the latest frags page though as this is where all new additions will show up and there are plenty of frags in the Rock N Critters skunk works currently healing over just waiting to go on the site!