Yellow Leather on Roids!

[WillyWonka]

I've had my yellow toadstool leather for about 2 months now. When i bought it, it was kind of shriveled up and wasnt fully extended so i thought it would easily fit in my tank. two months have passed now and its HUGE. it cant fully sprawl out anymore and is taking over the left side of my tank. is there anyway to trim these things or maybe even frag it in a way so it doesnt look weird? thanks, WW

[Christopher Marks]

There's not really any way to frag it without it looking kind of wierd for awhile...it would involve cutting off part of the top 'umbrella' part of it.

[tinyreef]

chop off a part of the crown. leave at least half of it (to be safe) chris is correct though you can chop it all off just not too low. i play it safe and just snip lobes off. i know, brawck-brawck!

 

the cutting should attach in 2~3 days on some gravel or rock chips. i'm always scouring the lfs's for rock rubble on the cheap!

[Mr_Spam]

yes my yellow leather is almost to big and i will have to frag is in the next 2 weeks. ive had it for a month.

[Fishiebusiness]

Just cut off some slices from the crown about 1 to 2 inches long and 1 inch wide, tie the slice down to a rock with the bottom of the slice touching the rock and it'll attach in a day or two. Then you're ready to sell off your nice yellow leather frags, trade them, or give them away.

[Sahin]

Hey thanks for posting this thread. My leather coral is quite big and I was wondering if I could frag it.

 

Just one question, would the leather coral let out a lot of slime/mucusy stuff?

I suspect it would do so more than other corals.

 

I am also wondering what effect this would have on other corals in the tank.

[Crakeur]

My leather was getting too big for the tank and it started dropping dime sized pieces off of the crown. I haven't seen where they went but they must be somewhere in the tank.

 

Personally, I would not want to "chop" off a piece. I have heard that if you use a rubberband to mark off an area that you want to frag, over time the constricted area will slowly separate from the main branch.

[tinyreef]

sahin,

 

yes, the leather (when cut) will release some chemicals (sarcophenes?) but if you're running carbon or a skimmer that should not be a problem. carbon is better. have the cut donor-leather in a decent flow area, not crazy turbulence. there should be very minimal mucus and the wound should close within six hours. colts and other softies will run like a nose in hay fever season (yuck! :x )

 

don't do your cutting in your nano though. the volume might not be enough to handle the chemical influx.

 

i usually dose with iodine afterwards to ward off infection.

[anthony812]

i agree with others..just cut off a part of its crown..what i did is to have a little plastic clear box in the center of my 10 gallon refugium and just drop the pieces in there with small rubbles of LR and they will attach themselves..i do the same with Mushrooms too..when the shroom is about 3" in Diameter..but the whole shrrom off at the top of its stem, then slice the shrrom crown into 4-6 pieces (cutting like a pie chart) and just throw the pieces in the plastic container..they will find litle rubbles to attcach on in a few days. I did that with one of my brown tonga frilly shroom and now i have 6 small ones..

[OscarBeast]

My leather when I got it... It is in the lower right.

 

My leather a few months later, just before I fragged it. It was shading about half of my tank!

 

I cut the heck out of my leather. I cut part of the stem off and tossed it. Then I cut the cap so there was a small circle attached to the stem. Then I cut the rest of the stem up in quarters. So far, every piece that I have cut off of it is alive and doing well.