I was mounting one of my corals last night using super glue. I ran out of the gel kind, so I was using the regular kind. I was in a hurry, so I put a blob of glue on the substrate, stuck the coral on, and placed it on my frag rack. Normally, I would have waited for the glue to fully dry, but I did not foresee any problems.
Well, reef water circulation has a way of tossing things around... a fairly large amount of the glue proceeded to float off. I watched it move towards the sand bed. I was afraid it might land on a coral, but to my horror, my curious yellow tang took a bite. Since the glue was not yet hard, the tang was able to bite into it and form a tight bond as it struggled to remove it. I tried unsuccessfully to catch the tang and after an hour called it quits, since I was only stressing it more. I made plans to take my tank apart the following day so I could remove the tang and try to remove the glue using a q-tip with acetone. For all I knew, the q-tip and acetone plus the stress of removing the glue would kill him.
I watched my tang struggle for about two hours last night. He would stare at his nori, writhe in frustration, and repeat. I went to bed last night feeling pretty rotten for sentencing my wonderful tang to a miserably slow death.
This morning when I got up, to my surprise, I found my tang was FREE. He managed to get all the glue off his mouth (although I assume trace amounts may still be present in his mouth). He has been eating nori, swimming about, and looks completely normal. Yay.
Anyway, lessons learned:
*Mount corals outside your tank whenever possible
*Wait for glue to sufficiently dry
*Aquarium maintenance should not be done in a hurry, since a quick fix could lead to a big mess
My tip: Mount corals to substrate (plugs, rubble, etc) using super glue OUTSIDE the tank and use epoxy to mount the substrate to your rockwork
Have a good one,
Daniel