I have a beautiful Green Yuma that is about 3 inches wide, and 4 inches wide on a good day. I would like to have more.

I've Googled around and found several ways to initiate propagation of Yuma's. Here are the 2 I've seen that look the easiest.

1. Just slice and dice. This doesn't seem to appealing to me, and can end up just killing it, as alot of the pieces just dissolve and go away, leaving you with nothing or at best, a mishaped Yuma.

2. Poke the Yuma lightly until it balls up. Then take an exact-o knife, scalpel or other ultra sharp tool and drag and cut around the base of the exposed foot. Pile up some frag plugs, or small rock rubble and wait for the little guys to form and come out from under the parent. This seems a little far fetched for me, and more like a crap shoot. I've seen my mushrooms do this naturally, and I just pull them out of the water and scrape the little ones into a bowl and then net them to rocks or plugs.

Number 2 seems like the option I'm looking for, keeping the nice looking Yuma I have in one piece for my view pleasure, but has anyone tested this method or something similar?

Thanks for your inputs.

I've never had a problem with cutting them straight down the middle. They usually don't take that long to heal back to normal. I've never tried cutting them off by the base before, so I wouldn't know how that one works, but I wouldn't expect it to produce multiple new ones.

I don't how many new ones you want to come from this or how quickly, but in my opinion cutting them down the middle is your safest bet. You can cut them down the middle, wait a couple weeks, then cut those two down the middle, and do it again and you can have a nice yuma colony in like two months.

I think someone did a pretty good write up on propagating yumas that is floating around here somewhere.

+1 to just cutting them right down the middle, much easier if you just wanna get more polyps

So, what you are saying is if I take a straight edge razor, and slice it down the middle, it will grow into 2 complete, round shaped yumas?

Can I do this while it's still attached to the rock? Or do I have to remove it, slice it and then net it up? He's on a bigger piece of LR right now, he jumped there from a little piece of rubble and double size in a few months. I don't really want to pull this rock out of the sand.

If I can get two of them, I wouldn't feel so bad about hacking one up. I really love the color of this guy and would like to get some out for sale or trade.

Yep, no need to take it off the rock first, just make a good clean cut all the way through it, and make sure you cut it through the center of the mouth too. If you're doing it in the tank make sure there's a bit of flow around the yuma so any slime or toxins can get blown away.

I've read if you leave them close to each other, like they would be if left attached to the rock, they just try and grow back together. More internet fud?

Might not be helpful, but the one Yuma I bought has turned into 4 with no real effort on my part. I seem to have placed it in an area that it didn't find to be perfect, so it slowly moved it's way an inch or two down and to the right. In the process, it left like 3 pieces of it's foot along the way, which are now growing into 3 separate Yuma's. Also, as a side, my Yuma was green when I bought it, turned orange in my tank, and the ones growing up look purple/blue....so I'd wonder if cutting it or other propagation methods might result in a color change. Just something to consider. Maybe someone else has some direct experience.

I had that happen with a regular shroom once. I never had it happen with the couple times I've cut a yuma or Florida ric. I don't think I made as good of a cut the time it happened with the mushroom. From my experience as long as I make the cut all the way through the foot and leave nothing attached they'll grow in to two.

Just cutting the foot works as well, I've done that with normal shrooms and yumas, but I believe it leaves you with a much smaller shroom than if you just cut one in half..

Tried slicing a regular shroom down the middle once and it grew back together, haven't tried on yumas.

Has anyone had any fatalities doing this?

put it in a blender...

.seriously though I have heard of people doing this