Fragging leather coral

Leather corals, also popularly known as toadstool corals, are among the easiest of all corals to keep.

These corals were also amongst the first to be fragged (i.e. propagated).

Simply cut an inch-square piece off any healthy leather coral, secure the cutting in a low flow area of a reasonably well-lit reef tank, and soon you’ll have two leather corals where before you had one.

The hardest bit for most first-time fraggers is chopping into what looks like such a delicate animal. But leather corals are incredibly tough, and fragmentation is a natural process. As aquarists, we just speed it up a bit.

How to frag a leather coral

Probably because leather corals are so easy to propagate, a lot of different techniques have been popularized as the ideal way to frag them. Some people cut off the corners, while others used the ‘doughnut’ technique.

Both methods shown in the three fragging videos below. They all use different ways to secure the frags, too.

The main points to remember when fragging leather coral:

Only frag healthy corals, in healthy aquariums
Brush over the coral to get the tentacles to retract before making any cuts or removing it from the water
Use a sharp blade!
Rinse off the slime produced before returning the cutting to the tank, by standing the cutting in a small vessel of water for a few minutes (not so important in big gloves)
I’d always wear gloves, personally.

Here’s how to frag a leather coral with the doughnut ring technique: