SPS frags v colonies
 

Am I the only one whose tank is completely populated with frags versus colonies? And by that, I mean fairly new sps tanks that ares still populating.

I sit and look at my little tank and all its small frags. Still very nice, but not like the pics everyone posts about their acro colony. Seems darn near everyone running sps tanks here are buying decent size colonies for their tanks.

So I wonder that even if the colony is a very good price and some of which I have seen are that, why instant reef, instead of growing everything from small.

Just a point of curiosity for discussion, nothing else. My own greatest joy in keeping acro,s is finding tiny frags and watching them grow.

Many of the beautiful acro,s Mike has, I traded him when I downsized as they were on large rocks, but those were grown from frags so tiny, I could hardly hang onto them to mount them. :lol:

Even the largest I have added lately, were fragged from some of his colonies but are a bit larger with a few heads, instead of the tiny single frag ordered online, which many of mine are.

Anyways, just interested in others views on the topic.

same reason you don't buy a car and paint it after driving it a year. Some people are interested in growing things, some want a reef to look at for purely aesthetic reasons...same reason most people buy plants instead of seeds.

There is no why in any of this there is only want you want with your tank.

I'm with you, I like to watch the growth, all my sps started as frags (although lately some of those frags have been pretty big) just something about watching a single 1" stick of coral grow up. Seems I've had better luck with smaller frags than I have with buying larger colonies, I think they adapt better.

Huh?

Ok, this part I get. :smile:

i have a nice tri color acro that i bought when it was about a inch. it is now growing and spreading like crazy over the past year and a half. i love to see the growth and how it adapts to my tank. there is alwasy new tips growing all over it. i can't wait for a year or two so i can see how big it gets. buying full colonys can have there advantages but the colony you buy is probably used to the tank it was in and it may not do so well once put in my tank. i am a frag guy all the way.

Jason

Yeah i forgot a bit of the message...some people want something to look at some want to be part of the process (ie restoring, gardening, frag growing etc) anyways the car part was a bad example...that i forgot to delete :)

Doug,

Enjoy your frags while it lasts. Before you know it they'll grow up and you'll have instead lots of different ones, only few big ones.
You'll have no room for anything new.
Believe me I grew everything from frags, I would never buy big colonies.
Cheers.
http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k2...f/IMG_5221.jpg

You could always buy colonies and frag them and cement your will to your addiction

I. up for either... my colonies were just ones that I saw that were so nice, and great price, I couldn't pass them up. But I also just added some frags of really nice ones (Coral Master), half the price of some colonies, but had to have a piece, so worth the extra cost. :mrgreen:

I love to watch frags grow...I look for changes every day, and the changes are more noticable on the little pieces rather than the large colonies, tho many I can no longer classify as "frags" because they've grown so much!

95% of my tank is composed of frags, the reason being when they grow in tank, they appear more natural than a colony on some hunk of cement wedged into a crevice. I have 3 colonies I bought from the LFS because they were really nice, and I got an exceptional price, but mostly, frags all the way. If you look at Denis' tank, you can see how that natural growth looks vs. the fruit stand appearance of many "instant" reefs.

I have bought several colonies over the last couple years....wish I hadn't, it's much more fun watching that little tiny frag grow and fill in your tank..instead of trying to find a big space for a colony and shelling out much more cash!

My tank is 100% populated by frags. It doesn't take much more than 1 year to produce things that look like large colonies.

I let Mike do that, then I frag his. :lol:

Lots of interesting response. Beautiful tank Denis. My 30 wants to be like that when it grows up. :mrgreen:

By the posts here already, some pretty amazing tanks grown from frags.