Trimming my Colt coral (Cladiella sp)

Today I finally took the plunge and decided to trim my huge Colt coral Cladiella sp. I added this coral when I first set up my reef aquarium. It has done very well, almost too well. It has grown a lot, shading other corals. Also its bottom half was starting to struggle because the top half was shading it. The aquariums sole point of focus was this coral and I could barely see the fish.

The tank before cutting

That said It took me a long time to gather the courage to trim it. I did not fancy just jumping in there and hacking my best growing coral to pieces.

Rather than take apart the whole tank, I decided to try and cut the coral in the main tank. From what I had read around forums this coral was easy to cut and wouldn't release much into the water. As a precaution I put a new bag of carbon in the filter to absorb any chemicals released, I also added a bag to the refugium where there cut off "frags would be housed.

Next I decided i would use a pair of very sharp scissors rather than a knife, which most people prefer. Me be a fairly clumsy person I thought scissors would give me the best chance of making a clean cut.

I only cut off three branches as an experiment, both to see how the coral would react and because I don't have much space to house the frags.This still made a huge difference to the look of the aquarium.

Here is a full tank shot a few hours after the cuts.

This coral always closes and produces mucus when you touch it any way, so I was expecting it to produce lots of mucous when I cut it. It didn't actually produce any more than when I brush past the coral cleaning. The coral seemed to return to normal very quickly. The wounds even seem to be closing over.

Here are the "stumps".

The frags of coral were put in refugium on some rubble in a low flow area, I did not attempt to attach them to rock as I am not good at them sort of fiddly jobs and hopefully they will attach themselves. These almost immediately opened up there polyps

The frags

So overall I think that has all gone so far so good. If nothing goes wrong with the main piece and the frags I will trim some more branches in a month or so time.