Do Chimera LPS Corals Lack Robustness?

[VintageReefer]

Grafted corals are a myth. All the grafted corals you see are just protein infections.

Interested in learning a little more, Can you expand on protein infections?

 

[fandaga]

It seems like there is misconception about what grafted or chimera corals mean. Watching a Jake Adams video (link), he talks about grafting SPS to itself just by gluing. Also, I imagine that the grafted red and green monti caps are just glued and start to grow into each other.

But for chimera torch corals, several of the photos online show one head with two distinctly different polyps. I have no idea how those would be made. I can’t imagine surgically removing a few polyps from one torch head and inserting into another would work.

 

[VintageReefer]

It’s not natural and it’s not grown that way, there is a transplant or man made grafting process

 

[fandaga]

Actually there’s a great video from WWC on grafting:

So oddly I do have a potential “chimera” zoa per the WWC description that happened accidentally in my tank. I had a frag of orange bam bams that was glued to a rock and one day fell into a BTA and was there for < 1 day before I noticed. I then put the frag on a rack immediately next to pink diamond zoas. It took a week before the bam bams opened again, and when they did, a few polyps started to show pink coloration within the orange. I’ll post before and after of those tonight.

 

[twentyleagues]

Actually there’s a great video from WWC on grafting:

So oddly I do have a potential “chimera” zoa per the WWC description that happened accidentally in my tank. I had a frag of orange bam bams that was glued to a rock and one day fell into a BTA and was there for < 1 day before I noticed. I then put the frag on a rack immediately next to pink diamond zoas. It took a week before the bam bams opened again, and when they did, a few polyps started to show pink coloration within the orange. I’ll post before and after of those tonight.

Typically there is a defining line between the two entities in a chimera not a mixing of them.
Cat

 

[VintageReefer]

They are/were 4 individual torches. None had any traits of the other.

They just share a common mounting platform / structure.

When open it may resemble a graft or a chimera, but it isn’t a real/natural one

I have a natural grafted hammer. The parent colony has been in captivity 20+ years and the owner reports every once in a while a branch splits and forms dual color heads from a single branch.

The heads share the same striped mouth pattern, it’s just one head developed with contrasting colors

 

[thamnasteroid]

Interested in learning a little more, Can you expand on protein infections?

Basically, corals get their bright colors from certain pigments. Sometimes, when two corals get close to each other, the pigments from one coral can spread to the other, causing like a bicolor effect. This is how we get most of our grafted corals in the hobby; from what I know, you can't actually fuse two separate colonies*. The only way a true grafted colony can form is when two coral planulae settle at the same spot and one does not "swallow" the other.
Fused corals happen when two colonies grow into one another. You can tell these apart from pigment infections by the fact that individual corallites/polyps aren't bicolor.

*I heard this from a Reef Dork/Prestige Reef live; the validity of this is uncertain. From all research, I've never actually seen an actual successful graft with LPS; all the threads about them eventually go silent.

 

[fandaga]

I have a natural grafted hammer. The parent colony has been in captivity 20+ years and the owner reports every once in a while a branch splits and forms dual color heads from a single branch.

Those look amazing!