Fragging encrusting Montipora

[H@rry]

I've got some encrusting Montiporas (Superman, Poker Star, Sunset) and have epoxied (is that a verb?) the plugs to my rock structure. They have now grown over the edges of the plugs onto the rocks. When I get ready to frag them, how should I do it? I don't want to tear by rock structure apart to take a rock out? I thought about twisting the original plug out and frag that. That would leave a donut on the rock and I could epoxy another plug in the middle and wait for it to encrust.

 

[Stray32]

Great question Harry, I am going to tag along if you don't mind...

 

[bige11]

What I do...

What I have done in the past is put small pieces of live rock, like quarter size, (or anything would work) around where it is encrusting. Then when it encrusts over that piece, I pull that piece up. Another cool thing to do to frag it up is to glue your original piece to a dead staghorn. #1 it looks like some really cool LE edition acro or digitata (lol... ), #2 (and more importantly) you can just break off a piece of the staghorn at anytime to frag it up. Good luck!

 

[Paul_N]

I have the same situation with a sunset. attaching a piece of rubble right next to it is the best option and then you can just take it off when you get some growth on it. Depending on the rock, you may be able to use a screw driver and break a piece of the rock off with some growth on it. I tried using a razor blade to cut some off of the rock but it didn't work for me.

 

[Paul_N]

Mine went from this :

to this:

 

[Murfman]

I had an ecrusting Monti that was glued on. I took a razor knife and cut around the plug base. Then I pried it off. It left the doughnut you describe but 6 months later it is almost all encrusted.

 

[Paul_N]

I had an ecrusting Monti that was glued on. I took a razor knife and cut around the plug base. Then I pried it off. It left the doughnut you describe but 6 months later it is almost all encrusted.

I think I may just end up doing that and that way I won't have the big lump in the middle. I was thinking also you could get a piece of tile and drill a hole in the middle and just and place the plug back in that and let it encrust and just cut the plug out of that one and then you can cut up the tile and have a few frags.

 

[H@rry]

Thanx for all the idea guys. :angel:

 

[macawmagic]

I have all my encrusting monti's on sep rocks. I went out and bought a bunch of nice round flat rocks. These are just laid on my main rock work. every 6 months or so I take them out, chop them up. put some pieces on another rock and start growing another colony. hope that helps.