mFrame Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 Like everyone I'm interesting in growing some of my corals specifically for fragging, which I assume most people do in a frag tank. Given that I don't have a frag tank I'm looking at ways to grow things in my main tank and have them be accessible to frag later. Almost every frag I have is on a plug or disk. If I glue or epoxy them to live rock it will be a pain to remove them later so I've had the following ideas and would love to hear everyone's experience or input. The first idea is to make some custom rock, like small mounds in interesting shapes (3" circles or less) with a hole in the center that fits a plug or disk flush with the rest of the surface. This should make it easy for encrusting corals to spread. I'd also thought of molding this on top of a piece of eggcrate so that the bottom would be scored and easy to break into fixed sizes when it is time to frag (just using the eggcrate to create a grid on it, it would be removed before totally dry). My other idea is to do basically the same thing but with silicon. Take a rock or something i like the shape of, put a piece of saran wrap over it, and smear the whole surface with silicon. Pour crushed coral or arg over it and let it dry. Poke a hole in it and then I would have a pliable frag "skirt" that I could set a plug in and place it on the sand bed or over live rock. Once the coral grows over the skirt it would be much easier to cut or remove. Any speculation on these ideas? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisfowler99 Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 Why not just drill an actual piece of rock? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnoburns Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 Are you thinking of using aragocrete for your first idea, the custom rock? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted June 12, 2009 Author Share Posted June 12, 2009 Most smaller rock I try to drill cracks. With a custom shape and scoring on it to break later I can control the size of frags and make them more "standard". With the silicon skirt I could then more easily attach it to pieces of large rock later on, and hopefully the silicon would be much more flexible than a hard base. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truckin Posted June 12, 2009 Share Posted June 12, 2009 I've come at the topic from a slightly different direction. Any way, in the past couple days, I have used super glue gel to attach an old-fashioned, plastic golf tee (most seem to be wood) to the bottom of a mount. I use side cutters to cut off the bottom of the tee leaving about an inch (or whatever fits the location). Depending on whether this is an existing mounted coral, or a new mount ready to receive a frag, the tee could be cut before or after gluing. Many of my live rocks have holes or cracks that the remaining tee fits into. Then if I want to move the mount, it just lifts out. So far, this seems to work. Hope this helps. Roy Buchanan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Truckin Posted June 13, 2009 Share Posted June 13, 2009 Take two: After playing around a bit more, it occurred to me that the bottom part of the golf tee might be more useful for this because it could fit into smaller holes and cracks. Haven't tried it, but plastic pics (party style?) might work as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mFrame Posted June 13, 2009 Author Share Posted June 13, 2009 Definitely an interesting idea, I like the golf tees. That definitely allows for more semi-permanent placing, but I'd still like to be able to produce frags without having to pull the full piece of live rock out. Guess it depends on whether it is encrusting or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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