All too often on social media I see people posting pictures of 'specks' on the glass or small invertebrates with the caption 'can anyone ID these'. The answer that often comes in the comments section is 'pods' which whilst not often wrong isn't always that helpful. So, this blog is all about answering the question, What are pods?

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What are Automatic Filter Rolls? What do they do? How do they work? Should I get one for my setup? In this Blog we're going to look at automatic filter rolls, the pros/cons and answer all of those questions you have about them.

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What is a frag? 

A frag is just like a plant cutting. It is a piece of coral which has been broken off or cut from a larger piece of coral to grow into a large coral all over again. It isn't a new coral to be exact but rather an exact copy of the original coral from which the frag came. The polyps of the coral will clone themselves and over time will grow into a copy of the original. Fragging corals is a great way to keep on top of corals which are getting too big and also makes for a cost effective way of adding corals to your reef because a frag will always be less expensive than buying the original larger coral. You can get coral frags of SPS, LPS and Soft Corals.

There are frags on the RnC website which can be found at the link below;

CLICK HERE FOR LATEST FRAGS

And if you want to read more information about frags, the pros and cons, then follow the link below to the Frags 101 blog post; 

CLICK HERE FOR FRAGS 101

What is a Coral Colony?

A Coral is an animal with a calcium carbonate skeleton covered in tissue and polyps. These polyps can be either small or large depending on the type of coral, hence LPS - Large Polyp Stony coral or SPS - Small Polyp Stony Coral. These polyps are identical to one another and replicate when the coral grows. They essentially 'colonise' an area on the reef by asexual reproduction which gives way to the name 'Coral Colony'. In the hobby we tend to use the term colony to define the size of a coral which can be quite subjective depending on who you speak to. A generally well accepted definition of what constitutes a colony is when the coral visually represents what the natural growth form of the coral is at its full size. This is easier for the likes of Acropora where one branch would be a frag and multiple branches which look just like a miniature version of the larger coral would be considered a colony or specifically in this scenario a 'mini colony'. It's more difficult for corals like Favia or Montipora where the growth is flat and encrusting. Defining 'colony' size of this coral is subjective but I would say it's somewhere around the size of a coffee coaster or larger, but again this is really subjective.