Some general questions about torch

So, about a week and a half ago I decided to get my first "slightly more difficult" coral, a torch. I was a little weary of how well it would do at first.
Needless to say, it must be doing fine, as it has begun splitting a new head. I am really surprised at how fast this happens. How long does it usually take for the entire separation to occur? I also read that it does best in substrate, so I have it in my sand. Is this a must, or can it be put on the rocks?
Its also making it quiet dense with all the heads so close together. How do you go about fragging these? Just cut it at the hard stem?

 

first off i dont think i would cut into a LPS like that one, might do some damage, unless im wrong. and you can place him up in the rocks towards the light, usually only Fungias and the like need to go in the sand.

 

Hmm. Now I'm worried. It looks like it has already been cut at the hard "stalks". I got it at the LFS, who had a bunch of it. When I asked him about it, he said one of the other customers was tearing down his reef tank and had to physically cut it out of his rocks. :-/

 

they can take a month or a year and anywere in between. it all depends on how thick the head is, how many times its splitting, you parims(cal. mag.alk)
levels of phosphate,(water current is a biggie), and lighting.

they are all diff.

and for fraggin just dont cut into the flesh in fact you want to leave at least 2-3 inches of skeleton so that the frag can be safely mounted. the polyps on the splitting heads may look ugly or close more often.

i would leave it if its dense forming, it will slowly split heads and branch farther out. then you can frag it.

cant tell by the pic if the one side is damaged or if it looks that way do to a split, because i dont watch your coral all day like i do mine.lol

but becareful they are prone to brown jelly disease if not treated with care and given good water quality.


oh and i would put it up of the sand on the rocks depending on lighting. not saying it wont do fine on the sand, but you will get much better color from it, and prob growth too.

do not let it get blasted by any linear current, likes to be swayed .

think that should cover it.lol

 

OK, I meant skeleton when I said "hard stem" before, I figured not to cut the actual flesh. My lights are a fairly powerful T5/MH combo, so I think lighting isnt an issue as far as it being on the sand.
And the side that looks damaged isnt the side thats splitting, actually. The smaller, darker side is the head that my clown was trying to host for a while. He's backed off, so I hope it recovers.

 

Torch corals like most euphyllias are cut off of huge colonies in the wild so thats why the stem of their skeleton usually looks broken, its not a bad thing though. Only about the first 1.5 inches or so of the top part of the torch are truly "alive" the rest is just dead skeleton.
When you want to frag it, you can break or cut through a branch at 3 inches down. The further down the better because sometimes the skeleton won't break straight across and you can split the living head if you frag too close to the top. There is no way to force the heads to split faster. I usually use a pair of really sharp scissors with a strong blade in order to cut euphyllias. Most have a fairly soft, somewhat pithy skeleton.
They prefer to be placed securely in the rockwork. Odd that you read that they should be placed in the substrate, I would say only if you had very graveley substrate. I guess they'll write anything nowadays.

Some of the amateur articles I've read online lately giving aquarium advice have been very questionable, like the blind leading the blind. Stick with wetwebmedia.com and books by Sprung,, Calfo, Borneman, Paletta, etc they know what they're talking about. And for the most part, don't listen to anything your lfs's tells you or tries to sell you unless you know for sure that they are very good reefers.

 

Yea, make sure it is secured. Mine fell over a few days ago, about a 5" drop to the sand from rock, and it still doesn't look happy.