A picture some of the brood stock that I use for propagation.



Hi! Welcome to my propagation webpage. I have been propagating my own inhabitants for about 1 year. Let me tell you how amazing it is to see new propagated inhabitants grow in my aquariums. So, far I've propagated many types of soft corals which include mushrooms, several types of leather corals, star polips, zoanthids, and xenia, . I recently purchased my first SPS frag and so far it is doing very well. Eventually, I will be propagating this as well.

Propagated inhabitants are much hardier than wild inhabitants because they have adapted to your aquarium conditions. The thing that I like most about propagating my own inhabitants is that I will eventually be able to fill every square inch on my reef with a reef inhabitant. Prior to hobbyists propagating their own inhabitants, this was pretty much impossible to accomplish this. I learned much of what I know from experimentation and reading articles published on the G.A.R.F.website. Here you will find a ton of information on the subject of reef propagation and the hobby in general.

Please share with me your experiences with propagating reef inhabitants. Communication between hobbyists is essential if we ever hope to stop robbing the oceans reefs of it's inhabitants.

Picture of the leather coral that I propagated. Notice the nice polip extention. The polip extention sometimes is as high as 1/4 inch. This species is doing very well in my aquarium. I will be propagating this coral within the next month. I will share with you how to do so and will track the growth of the new coral. Propagating Leather Coral is Easy. Try it Some Time!


Xenia is one of my favorite species. Everytime someone looks at my aquarium, they comment and ask me questions about my Xenia. Propagating Xenia is easy. The hardest part is getting up the nerve to do so.

In order to propagate Xenia, you will need the following materials:

  • Bridal Veil
  • Sharp Scizzors
  • Rubber Band
  • Bowl full of reef water
  • Rock Fragments
  • xenia

    I bought the bridal vail at a local fabrics store. It was very inexpensive. As for the rock fragements, I took a piece of live rock and hit it a couple of times with a hammer in order to fragment the rock into relatively small pieces(on the G.A.R.F. website, they talk about making your own live rock if you can believe that. I will be attempting this over the next few months and will report back to you on my results).

    To propagate the my Xexia, I took my pair of sharp scizzors and cut the Xenia at the stock mid way down and let the Xenia cuttings fall into a bowl of reef water. I then cut the cutting into several smaller pieces in order to take full advantage of the propagation session. Next, I placed the Xenia cuttings onto live rock fragments and then covered the live rock fragments with bridal veil. I used a rubber band to fasten the bridal veil to the live rock. Finally I placed the new Xenia cuttings into my tank in an area with relatively rapid water movement and waited 7 days before removing the bridal veil from the live rock fragments. I glued the live rock fragments onto existing pieces of Aragorock tm live rock using super glue gel . I have never had problems with the super glue harming any of my inhabitants. Currently, I am using Lock Tite Quick Tite super glue purchased at my local pathmark.

    I propagated this Xenia on 1/30/99. It,s now 2/15/99 and this xenia is doing fantastic. It pulses very fast. Propagated xenia grows very fast. I will take pictures of this newly propagated xenia over time to show you just how fast this species grows.

    Propagating Xenia is Easy. Try it Some Time!
    If you would like to trade your coral cuttings for cutting that I have, please e-mail me a list of what you currently have to offer and I will e-mail you back the same.

    You can see other types of recently propagated xenia (Fiji Pom Pom)in this picture as well. Propagated xenia is extremely hardy and does very well in an established aquarium. Make sure that your water does not get over 80 degrees for the xenia will start to suffer and will eventually crash. I like to keep my tank at 78 degrees.

    This is a picture of a bowl containing mushroom fragments that were freshly propagated. Of course, this bowl is filled with water taken directly from the aquarium in which that will be housed. Plastic bowl used to propagate my inhabitants.

    From here, I will attach these mushroom to rock fragments using bridal veil and a rubber band. I will keep the bridal veil on the rock for two weeks. After two weeks, I will remove the bridal veil. At that time, these mushrooms will have had ample time to attach to the rock fragments.

    Occasionally, the mushroom will attach itself to the bridal veil instead of the rock fragment. When this occurs, I cut the bridal veil around the mushroom and attach the bridal veil to the rock fragment using super glue gel. The super glue gel does not harm the aquarium habitants. I purchased the super glue gel at my local home depot for $1.95. For $1.95, I got two small tubes. I allow about five minutes for the glue to dry prior to placing the rock fragment back into my aquarium. Keeping the mushroom out of the water for this period of time does not harm the mushroom.

    This is another picture of one of the Xenia that I recently propagated. I used a small live rock fragment as the base by which to attach the new cutting. Propagated Xenia

    I like using small pieces of rock as my base for recently cut frags because it allows you more flexibility as to where you can place the cutting within the aquarium.

    If I propagated this frag onto a larger piece of rock, placement within the aquarium would be much more difficult. Once i've determined that the new fragment is happy with it's placement on the reef, I will glue the small rock fragment to the reef using super glue gel.

    Please e-mail me your comments/feedback on this site

    joesreef@yahoo.com