How are acros getting grafted?

[Damian reef boi]

How are vendors grafting acros like the rainbow splice? I think this is super intresting and I'm curious.

 

[Michael Gray]

haha ya... graft one crazy one and bam my new custom build done LOLOL

 

[TheDragonsReef]

As far as i know grafted corals are not 2 corals put together. Pretty sure ones like the rainbowsplice are naturally found or simply occured on a coral then grown and fragged. I think some montis have been combined though.

If im wrong id be interested in hearing it too haha

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

When you put corals of the same species together over time the corals can run or graft...
D

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Monti cap green and red is the common graft.
D

 

[monkeyCmonkeyDo]

Colors*

 

[Damian reef boi]

Intresting

 

[homer1475]

I have 2 montis I've been trying to graft, but not on purpose. One I thought I had gotten rid of, but is now growing again.

Unfortunately, they just keep plating over the top of each other, and will not graft together.

 

[Big E]

Grafting is just as it's defined...........grafting two corals of like species and watch them grow together and mix................there is no magic. The coral isn't genetically altered in any way.
In other words a blue and red coral can be grafted but the blue won't start sprouting red or visa versa.

If both pieces grow at the same rate you can see some swirling at contact points.

If you don't mind staying up with the practice it can be cool by constantly cutting a creating a larger colony by mixing the tips or branch colors.

There is also something I define as pigment migration where a coral can bleach and then pigments from another coral will occupy that bleached area. That's what happened here to my orange cap. It was bleached by a nearby coral and then the pigments migrated into the orange cap. The orange section always grew faster and I had to continue to frag it to keep both colors at the growth edge.

My best guess is the pigments came from my efflo which was the cause of bleaching of the cap.

This type of natural occurrence has a more blended/swirling look than grafting. The same as with grafting the orange edge will not start growing green or visa versa.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

They aren't. Grafting corals rarely if ever works. The Rainbow Splice is the results of a Green Florescent Protein infection. You can read about it here https://reefbuilders.com/2019/01/10/the-rainbow-splice-acropora-millepora-from-reef-raft-canada/

 

[jda]

Grafts usually end up mono colored over time... not always, but usually. Zoox infusions can stay, but sometimes the original host can just take over and the introduced color can disappear - again, a crap shoot. I would not pay too much for some of these since you just honestly don't know what you are going to get over time... sometimes awesome, but most of the time just blah.

Joe Knows Reefs Rainbow is a grafted coral that has kept it color over at least a decade. I think that it is safe to say that this one might make it.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

Grafts usually end up mono colored over time... not always, but usually. Zoox infusions can stay, but sometimes the original host can just take over and the introduced color can disappear - again, a crap shoot. I would not pay too much for some of these since you just honestly don't know what you are going to get over time... sometimes awesome, but most of the time just blah.

Joe Knows Reefs Rainbow is a grafted coral that has kept it color over at least a decade. I think that it is safe to say that this one might make it.

What's the history behind JKR Rainbow being grafted? I have a large colony and it doesn't appear to be grafted at all. RRC Rainbow Splice has been around for at least 3 years now. No fear on it losing it's colors LOL.

 

[jda]

There are photos of the JKR Rainbow on Reef Farmers website where you can see the two different corals and where the graft happened... no idea if that site is still up. I used to know the two species, but I have long forgotten.

There was a JKR Rainbow 2.0 that was even better, but I think that it has all but died out. I have not seen it in a long time. It was awesome. It looks like a typical A. Plana with many bright colors and not a graft.

It is rare that a corals takes the color of another and assimilates it fully. You usually just get colored streaks and eventually when the streak ends, then so does the two colors. You see this with most montis and millepora that have been grafted. Sometimes, a coral will accept some of the other coral for good, but this is more rare.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

There are photos of the JKR Rainbow on Reef Farmers website where you can see the two different corals and where the graft happened... no idea if that site is still up. I used to know the two species, but I have long forgotten.

There was a JKR Rainbow 2.0 that was even better, but I think that it has all but died out. I have not seen it in a long time. It was awesome. It looks like a typical A. Plana with many bright colors and not a graft.

It is rare that a corals takes the color of another and assimilates it fully. You usually just get colored streaks and eventually when the streak ends, then so does the two colors. You see this with most montis and millepora that have been grafted. Sometimes, a coral will accept some of the other coral for good, but this is more rare.

Here's the info on it. It was possibly grafted, but not intentionally, and this information is from 2011. I highly doubt that it is an actual grafted coral.

Joe's Rainbow Acropora is an exotic rainbow colored Acropora that was originally exported from Fiji. Almost every color in the rainbow is found within this Acro. The base area has blue edge pigments, fluorescent green patches and also patches of pink pigments. Polyps can be colored pink and/or green. Branch stems are turquoise with areas that contain a medium dark fluorescent green. Branch tips and corallite edges are purple. Some of the corallites have a unique purple colored upper area with a fluorescent green lower area. We do not have an image of the original imported colony, which had turned brown quickly. It is possible that some of these pigments were grafted into the original colony while the coral was maintained within captivity.

 

[jda]

Somebody spoke about it at a show probably a decade ago now. It was two corals. I used to know what kinds they were, but have forgotten. This is before trick lighting and trying to get every penny from a named corals. Dudes were easier to trust back then. Did you find the photo? You can see two different species on it and where they came together... but I have no idea if it still exists.

 

[sculpin01]

They aren't. Grafting corals rarely if ever works. The Rainbow Splice is the results of a Green Florescent Protein infection. You can read about it here https://reefbuilders.com/2019/01/10/the-rainbow-splice-acropora-millepora-from-reef-raft-canada/

Green fluorescent protein is not infectious. I worked in the lab where its structure was determined back in the 90's. It's just a protein that fluoresces green when blue light shines on it. It has no way to move on its own between coral colonies.

Proteins that produce pigment can be transferred between corals via thraustochytrids (and possibly phages) and I have witnessed this between Montipora confusa colonies (GFP transferred across the tank from a green colony to a purple colony which then became green-with-purple-highlights). I've never seen this between Acropora species, though. Interestingly, I tried to graft frags of the two confusas together and they refused to fuse, eventually trying to overgrow each other.

Grafting corals can be done but is rarely successful and very much species specific. Adult corals have well developed immune systems that usually prevent this. There was a good talk on it by Justin Grabel at MACNA 2016.

Another option to explain the Rainbow Splice and "grafted" colonies is a coral chimera, where multiple baby corals (planulae) originally settled together and fused, eventually making a coral with multiple genomes. Corals do not form an immune system until they are larger, allowing this to happen. Chimerism provides a survival advantage in the wild with increased growth rate and colony size when compared to non-chimeric colonies. Individual genomic traits are are usually expressed mixed (swirled) throughout the eventual fusion colony. Some of Dr. Jamie Craggs spawned colonies he has grown out have this appearance, indicating that they are chimeric.

If your interested, here's a nice paper on coral chimeras in Acropora millepora:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.1035

 

[sculpin01]

Here's another paper where P. damnicornis demonstrates the same phenomena:

https://www.uog.edu/_resources/files/ml/raymundolab/peer-reviewed/RaymundoMaypa_2004.EcolApplGettingbiggerfaster.pdf

 

[Charlie the Reefer]

Green fluorescent protein is not infectious. I worked in the lab where its structure was determined back in the 90's. It's just a protein that fluoresces green when blue light shines on it. It has no way to move on its own between coral colonies.

Proteins that produce pigment can be transferred between corals via thraustochytrids (and possibly phages) and I have witnessed this between Montipora confusa colonies (GFP transferred across the tank from a green colony to a purple colony which then became green-with-purple-highlights). I've never seen this between Acropora species, though. Interestingly, I tried to graft frags of the two confusas together and they refused to fuse, eventually trying to overgrow each other.

Grafting corals can be done but is rarely successful and very much species specific. Adult corals have well developed immune systems that usually prevent this. There was a good talk on it by Justin Grabel at MACNA 2016.

Another option to explain the Rainbow Splice and "grafted" colonies is a coral chimera, where multiple baby corals (planulae) originally settled together and fused, eventually making a coral with multiple genomes. Corals do not form an immune system until they are larger, allowing this to happen. Chimerism provides a survival advantage in the wild with increased growth rate and colony size when compared to non-chimeric colonies. Individual genomic traits are are usually expressed mixed (swirled) throughout the eventual fusion colony. Some of Dr. Jamie Craggs spawned colonies he has grown out have this appearance, indicating that they are chimeric.

If your interested, here's a nice paper on coral chimeras in Acropora millepora:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2011.1035

Hey there - sorry to resurrect this thread from the dead.

Been studying grafting lately and unfortunately it seems you really have to dig for anything beyond superficial. If anything is apparent it's that the term "grafting" ambiguously refers to a whole umbrella of diverse biological phenomenon. Your post hinted at some things I haven't seen before though. I hope you don't mind if I ask you some questions on the topic.

First of all, if there are any research papers or textbooks or something you can point me in the direction of instead of answering my questions, I would be appreciative of that.

Thraustochytrids. I did some basic research on them and it seems they are an ordinary eukaryotic member of the reef food chain. What makes them "special", i.e. having a potential ability to transfer pigmentation/proteins? My first thought are these types of pigment transfers plausibly involve some genomic element, so bacteria phages would make a lot more sense in my head. Or even another of the multiple bacterial genomic mechanism. I did see that potential parasitic relationships between marine animals and thraustochytrids is a topic of investigation, but no conclusive evidence found in that area, and it would strike me as odd that this "GFP grafting" is a result of some parasitic relationship.

Sorry if this is basic knowledge and I may be out of my league but if that's the case some direction to reading material would be very appreciated. Thanks for your time!

 

[sculpin01]

Hey there - sorry to resurrect this thread from the dead.

Been studying grafting lately and unfortunately it seems you really have to dig for anything beyond superficial. If anything is apparent it's that the term "grafting" ambiguously refers to a whole umbrella of diverse biological phenomenon. Your post hinted at some things I haven't seen before though. I hope you don't mind if I ask you some questions on the topic.

First of all, if there are any research papers or textbooks or something you can point me in the direction of instead of answering my questions, I would be appreciative of that.

Thraustochytrids. I did some basic research on them and it seems they are an ordinary eukaryotic member of the reef food chain. What makes them "special", i.e. having a potential ability to transfer pigmentation/proteins? My first thought are these types of pigment transfers plausibly involve some genomic element, so bacteria phages would make a lot more sense in my head. Or even another of the multiple bacterial genomic mechanism. I did see that potential parasitic relationships between marine animals and thraustochytrids is a topic of investigation, but no conclusive evidence found in that area, and it would strike me as odd that this "GFP grafting" is a result of some parasitic relationship.

Sorry if this is basic knowledge and I may be out of my league but if that's the case some direction to reading material would be very appreciated. Thanks for your time!

I believe the idea of their involvement was floated in this article:

Thraustochytrids: The Most Important Coral Symbiont No One Knows About

By Justin Credabel, Co-Owner ReefGen There has been an overlooked yet vitally important organism living in our reef aquariums. I’d like to introduce to the

reefs.com