[scapegoat444]

This is something the reef tank community has been using for years, in fact there are whole businesses built around the practice of fragging and selling corals... to the point that there is already equipment made for this purpose.

From "frag tanks" built wide, long, and shallow to allow light to have an easier time reaching the corals, to "frag plugs" made from ceramics that allow people to glue coral frags to to slot into existing rock, egg crate, etc.

I think maybe the accidental discovery was that the researcher found that this very common procedure to cultivating aquarium corals ended up also promoting the growth speed too.

[crazydoggers]

Well dime size is generally smaller than most hobbyists frag. Obviously fragging coral is done rather often in the reef tank hobby, but usually for the purpose of trimming growth, aquaculture, and sharing colonies.

Plus, Ive been in the hobby for 8 years, and I’ve never heard of purposely placing frags from the same colony next to to each other so they fuse.

I’m unaware of anyone studying the impact of fragging specifically on growth rate in this way.

Edit: I’ve found some discussion of at least one reef hobbyist experimenting with the method based on this research. So yes this was somewhat novel.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/my-microfragging-sps-exper...