Trimming war coral

[Norwich_Reefer]

Hi guys, my war coral is starting to spread a bit too much now and stinging my hirsuta frag. I'm unable to remove the rock its on and I'm looking for advice on how I can prune/trim it back. Heres a pic of the coral itself.

 

[Brady4000]

Bump,

I would like to know this too. Following.

 

[FishyFishFish]

I was looking at fragging mine before putting it in my tank. From the research I did the suggestion was to use a bandsaw, which clearly won't work in your tank. The other less popular possibility was a dremel, which won't work either. I didn't try either.

The reason I mention this is because you probably won't just be able to cut it, you will likely have to saw it.

I took mine out of the frag tank to glue to a rock last night and, even without cutting, it expelled a load of slime. I would think that sawing it in the tank, if you tried with a hand saw, might be pretty messy.

I'm interested in any expert answers as well. Maybe there might be something (another coral?) that you can put in its path to control its growth, but I'm not sure what.

 

[FishyFishFish]

A quick internet search mentions a hammer and chisel (but don't break the tank )!

Another option mentioned is to place small rocks around it, and when they grow onto that small rock, break it off and replace the rock with a new one.

 

[Brady4000]

Wow... these are all awful ideas. Lol not that they are wrong, just I really don’t want to deal with this.. guessing the OP doesn’t either l.

what would win. War coral or sps?

 

[FishyFishFish]

I agree and I hope that someone can suggest a better solution to the OP.

My little nano tank now has one big rock with just an RFA on it and nothing else, and a growing number of standalone rocks with frags that I am concerned might take over the tank, for this very reason.

Not that it's a big consolation, but the coral in the OP's photo does look awesome.

 

[Norwich_Reefer]

Sorry for the late reply guys hammer and chisel?! Don't fancy that! I need to do something but just don't want to kill it it looks great. Its killing off the bottom of my hirsuta frag though. I've thought about a Stanley blade and just trying to trim it back. Someone must have had to cut one of these back at some point.

 

[rhdoug]

I had a hand-sized one sitting on my sandbed. It is now 2 pieces, I cut it in half due to space restrictions. The skeleton was surpisingly fragile, and I suspect I could have easily cut through it with an exacto knife or scalpel. Since I was able to take it out of the tank I cut through the tissue with an exacto knife first and then the skeleton with a dremel, which was overkill, the skeleton was slightly harder than a Pringle potato chip. Good luck with cutting yours, I suspect you will need to let them fight it out due to them both having encrusted on the rock.

 

[Norwich_Reefer]

OK so I tried trimming a bit back with a Stanley blade...kind of worked on the small bit I tried but not ideal. Its been suggested to me to just put putty over the bits I don't want so it dies off.. reluctantly I think I will have to give it a go.

 

[Dkmoo]

Cover it with a ring of epoxy or glue. Once they grow over it you can use a screw driver to pry it off. Its usually easier to pry epoxy/glue off the rock, than to pry encrusting corals off the rock. This is what I do with my psammocora..usually i just throw the extra pieces away but those pieces could have easily been glue in frag plugs.