So what is in a coral

[joe]

So since i had this GB for my acan i have been doing quite a bit of fragging.

the acan i cut was a large rock with lots of layer and it was very difficult to cut into.
it did smell and splater alot, but i was wondering what exactlly is in the rock. there were layers of diffrent consistencys, some that just "powdered away" under the dremel but other were very thick and were much harder to get through.
I would like to know what is in the rock, how long does it take to form, what is in each of the layers that makes some easy to cut and others very difficult.
anybody of a higher knoledge out there able to give some input or info.

also what i noted which is intressting is that, i cut to corals that i know positivley come from two diffrent countrys and each one had a different smell.
one smelled rancid and like a bad ocean smell, and another actually smelled good. i swear it had a smell of peaches.
So this may not aply to SPs as much as LPS which sort of grow on the rock and deposit layers, while SPS is a bit diffrent.

so enough talking i wanted to know if anyone knew anything ese about the corals and the rocks they grow on and what is deposited etc etc.

joe

 

[jenniebutterfly]

well, the layers could be all sorts of different things, depending on where the corals come from, or where the rocks they were aquacultured onto came from. i know what you mean, and i have found that sometimes when i frag, i have a coral growing on an old skeleton which is pretty hard, then under that is the rock, which is sometimes soft, or sometimes hard. this is why i think all aquacultered corals should be grown onto flat thin rocks. makes fragging much easier

 

[joe]

yeh defntlly alot of acans grow almost as if a polyp was stuck on a baseball and then they encrusted around it , so its spherical. and there are lots of diffrent layers. = hard to frag.

i totly agreea bout the flat disk thing

 

[jenniebutterfly]

if it was spherical with many layers, it was probably a coral skeleton that it had been growing on

 

[jejton]

I have been trying to do some research into coral anatomy myself. Here is one website that I found to be pretty informative.
http://krupp.wcc.hawaii.edu/BIOL200/powerpnt/corlanat/index.htm
Part of the problem with researching this is that the aquarium hobby doesn't necessarily use the same standards and terminology as science. I have been trying to find out the differences between LPS and SPS, anatomically, physiologically,etc and I haven't found those terms used anywhere but aquarium sites.