+Daniel Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
innate1 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 Glad everything turned out o.k. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisfowler99 Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 eek! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbnj Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 (edited) Isn't that the famous "Reef Diet"? Edited January 20, 2010 by pbnj Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+dapettit Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 Doged another reef bullet! Glad everthing worked out. Dave- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishypets Posted January 20, 2010 Share Posted January 20, 2010 You deserve to have animal cops called on you! What a horror story, but a happy ending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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