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Fragging rainbow and CB Flaming Bugatti chalices! [emoji304] [emoji91]

Chromis

Chromis

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I bought this rainbow chalice two years ago at a CFM, and man did it go through a rough phase at first... it might have been too fresh of a cut, who knows... the recovery scared me away from cutting it for two years.

When I bought it:
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One year later, remounted in the new tank (still tiny):
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Then, exponential growth... being an engineer I have to show a data plot of number of eyes vs time [emoji851]
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It started to grow down over the edges of the rock and was not about to plate out, so it was time to start cutting! The nice thing about the rainbow coral is it had equal parts blue & red, so I got some good balanced frags from it, but other frags were just blue or just red. I kept those mono-color frags and recombined then on tiles to keep for the next grow-out.
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About one year ago I also got a one-eyed Flaming Bugatti frag from CB on eBay. This time I was a little smarter and mounted it on a FLAT surface:
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Here it was last weekend:
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I first used a bandsaw to cut just the chalice away from the substrate, so the resulting frags would be nice and thin (not a giant tall frag that has to grow down the sides before it can grow outward.
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I’m sawing with one hand and taking photos with the other [emoji12]
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Here are some of the pieces I’m keeping, one has the classic maroon/gold and the other was where some blue was creeping back into the otherwise red/gold Flaming Bugatti. Maybe when it grows out it will be a rainbow Bugatti...
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And here is a rainbow chalice I’m keeping:
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[emoji304]
 
Rainbow chalice question - You said, "The nice thing about the rainbow coral is it had equal parts blue & red, so I got some good balanced frags from it, but other frags were just blue or just red. I kept those mono-color frags and recombined then on tiles to keep for the next grow-out."
Do you mean you placed some red frags and some blue frags together so they would combine?
Did you place any mono-color together? Do you know if a mono-color piece will become rainbow eventually?
 
MolaMola said:
Rainbow chalice question - You said, "The nice thing about the rainbow coral is it had equal parts blue & red, so I got some good balanced frags from it, but other frags were just blue or just red. I kept those mono-color frags and recombined then on tiles to keep for the next grow-out."
Do you mean you placed some red frags and some blue frags together so they would combine?
Click to expand...
Yes!

MolaMola said:
Did you place any mono-color together? Do you know if a mono-color piece will become rainbow eventually?
Click to expand...
That was the question I had too. At least in this case, you can see the original frag area is outlined, and it seemed like the red/blue areas just got bigger. There might be some tiny streaks of blue starting in the red, but not much of any red starting in the blue. Even the Bugatti chalice which came in all red (it’s conventionally a red-gold chalice) started to get one small blue streak, I cut that specific area out to make a more blue grow out frag. So it seems like blue frags stay hopelessly blue and red frags eventually get small blue streaks, but the frag will only have balanced colors of it starts that way. That’s why I was careful how I fragged the rainbow chalice and put mono frags together to recreate the rainbow.
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Love you data plot to show the growth :D

Although in astronomy we'd simply refer to that as an "inflation period" since the exponential growth in no way can continue
 
Nice write up. From what I’ve experienced, two pieces of the same chalice placed near each other will not fuse like Montipora, cyphastrea, or psammocora. My pink chalice butts up against each other forming clear outer boundaries where they meet. I have also tried putting two different chalices next to each other and where they meet, they have both decided to grow up toward the light forming a wall. I will post pictures tonight
 
Also impressive is the feed height on that bandsaw, I remember using one a while back (one of the original Inland Aquatics if foggy memory serves me well) and if it was larger than a 2-3 inches you couldn't fit it through.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Also impressive is the feed height on that bandsaw, I remember using one a while back (one of the original Inland Aquatics if foggy memory serves me well) and if it was larger than a 2-3 inches you couldn't fit it through.
Click to expand...
this also makes me want to upgrade my bandsaw.
 
Here is a photo of the same pink chalice that will not fuse and to the right of it is a teal chalice that is growing upwards where they both meet.

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This is the same pink chalice growing in a different part of my tank that also does not fuse.
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It will be interesting to see how your frags heal and if they will fuse together over time.
 
It doesn’t look promising for fusion based on your example. I have two tiles with red and blue cuts of the rainbow chalice so we’ll see what happens.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Also impressive is the feed height on that bandsaw, I remember using one a while back (one of the original Inland Aquatics if foggy memory serves me well) and if it was larger than a 2-3 inches you couldn't fit it through.
Click to expand...
It’s nice for this kind of job. Otherwise I prefer the Inland bandsaw - I don’t like recirculating the cutting water or lifting the heavy thing to dump the water out of the reservoir.
 
glee said:
Here is a photo of the same pink chalice that will not fuse and to the right of it is a teal chalice that is growing upwards where they both meet.

View attachment 12274

This is the same pink chalice growing in a different part of my tank that also does not fuse.
View attachment 12275


It will be interesting to see how your frags heal and if they will fuse together over time.
Click to expand...

Update - my chalices behaved the same way - you can take two pieces of the same chalice and put them next to each other, but they will not grow back together. Opposite of acropora behavior. Wonder why it works this way.

Red/blue sections of the same chalice:
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Examples of acropora cut from the same
colony growing together in my tank:
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Also there is no such thing as grafting/grafted Montipora or acropora. Will explain in some
other thread...
 
The purple/blue Ora one I have does I think and somewhat recently fragged yes. I think the red one I have does it too. If I leave frags too close together they get stuck to each other.
 
Hmm maybe it makes a difference if they are cut and placed right next to each other vs. what I did, which was give them too much space so they are healed and “set in their ways” before running into each other...
 
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