Fragging zoanthids off a base rock?

atomic081 · Feb 5, 2020

I'm curious if anyone has suggestions on how I can make a few frags without getting the colonies out of the tank. I have a base rock with 500+ utter chaos zoas. My tank is 4ft front to back and 32 inches tall, so getting to these with a scalpel is extremely hard, even with a mask and snorkel.

(Bad pic from 6 months ago. Double the size now, only whites running but you get the point)

I'm thinking about crushing live rock into small pieces and just setting them in the colonies. Do you think they would grow over the small rock given enough time? Thus creating frags to glue to a plug?

Euphyllia97 · Feb 5, 2020

I would indeed just put some small pieces of rock next to the zoas. Make sure there is no gap in between. They will grow on the pieces and tgen you can place them wherever you want. (Maybe small cut needed between colony and frag). Tank is looking good!

atomic081 · Feb 5, 2020

Euphyllia97 said:
I would indeed just put some small pieces of rock next to the zoas. Make sure there is no gap in between. They will grow on the pieces and tgen you can place them wherever you want. (Maybe small cut needed between colony and frag). Tank is looking good!

Im glad someone thinks the same way I do. I usually dont have a problem with this as i always let my Zoanthids grow off the plug, then i pull the plug for my frag tank. Rinse and repeat for new frags. Unfortunately my original plug is being borrowed by a buddy.

If anyone else has other suggestions, i would love to hear it!! SPS are so easy to frag compared to this!

eggplantparrot · Feb 5, 2020

my way of "fragging" (more like culling) was to just grab by the stalks and rip them off of the rock (in my case it was a conch shell). i felt bad just throwing them out so i glued the remains on a frag disk, and guess what, zoas are tough as nails and come back from being ripped apart.