Fragging

[ca2or]

+1 on the hammer and screwdriver, plus I glue my zoas on my LR, so I'd much rather have them on a small piece of rock then a plug, but my opinion only

I am right there with you. I actually despise frag plugs and disks as a whole. YES I have some and understand that they will most likely always be a part of my tank, but I yearn for the day when my reef is full and looks 100% natural...well as natural as it can in a glass box sitting in my living room....but you get the idea.

Plus I feel that placing a coral to start growing on a rock that has been sitting alive in a mature tank for X amount of years is going to yield far better results than a fresh frag plug. I have taken rocks out of my sump...broke em up...then glued fresh cut frags onto them.

 

[Ninjapotamus]

Made this video about 4 months ago... Wasn't totally happy with it so I never linked it around...I dont explain things very well in the video so I will try and explain it a little bit better here. Anyways... This is how I break down a wild colony. The vast majority of wild colonies I have done this with are on VERY soft rock. Bone clippers are very rarely needed. I am removing the polyp mat by going underneath and leaving very little sub material. I remove it in large mini colony chunks of pure zoa mat flesh.. its very easy. Then once I have these nice mini-colony sized slabs I put them on the cutting board and slice them up into whatever sizes I want... usually 2 or 3 polyps. One of the keys to getting fast growth is to leave very little material below the mat. I buy a lot of frags from other hobbyists and when I get a polyp on top of a gumball sized rock glued to a TINY frag plug :choler: It is such a pain in the ***... these take FOREVER to grow when glued like that...

A lot of people probably wonder why I don't just leave it on the rock... for one.... wild colonies are full of hitchhikers that dips simply do not remove. I usually do a 5 minute dip in revive before fragging. This is useful because if I see zoa nudis, starfish, etc in the water I know to keep an eye out for more when I am breaking down the colony. The dip NEVER gets everything - N-E-V-E-R. There are so many nooks and crannies that you can't fully clean a rock out of hitchhikers with just a dip. Second... its so much more efficient to grow on plugs. 20 3 polyp frags will grow so much faster than a massive clump on a rock with very little growth surface area. Third, once you have the zoas/palys growing on a disc fragging them becomes so easy anyone can do it with the right tools(... the wood chisels from the video are amazing for this.. :angel. Scalpels... dremel tool... xactos...bone chisels... band saws... I have them all. The 1.50$ dollar store wood chisels are better than any of them.

[video=youtube;iXr-XAQs0cs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXr-XAQs0cs[/video]

 

[tj51]

nice vid!

 

[A. grandis]

I just posted a thread, but I spent an evening in the emergency room, lots of money, and will be medicated and my lungs full of crap for the next few weeks from just palytoxin "steam" why would people get on a thread and tell people not to be safe, even is the risk is small?

I don't understand why people would do that. It's all over the place. Other forums have the same type of criticism.
The Palytoxin issue is the most important when keeping zoanthids.
To say that Palytoxin is a minor issue is at least irresponsible just because the truth is so evident.

Grandis.

 

[A. grandis]

Made this video about 4 months ago...
...
... The 1.50$ dollar store wood chisels are better than any of them.

[video=youtube;iXr-XAQs0cs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXr-XAQs0cs[/video]

Great info and video, Ninjapotamus!!
Thanks very much for sharing! :bigsmile:

Grandis.