When the thickets start to take over

Coronus · Nov 17, 2017

Whats up SPS nuts. I have a small problem, but actually a good one to have. I need to remove some sps colonies because of over growth. I have 4 large colonies growing on 1 Big rock . They are growing to fast and even though I Frag them regularly. I can’t keep up. They are starting to kill each other at the base by growing together. So I am gonna remove them and place in my propagation System. Plus this will make room for a bunch new Frags that need to be placed also.
The big question is how to completely remove the base of the corals that have encrusted.
Looking for all ideas on this. I have a few ideas but would like to hear from you.

ChiCity · Nov 17, 2017

Once you’ve removed the colonies, you can take the rock out and cover the encrusted parts with h2o2 soaked paper towels until they bleach and die, then you can cover the spots up with epoxy to ensure they don’t come back

29bonsaireef · Nov 17, 2017

In your case, I would take a chisel and hammer to the rock and break it up, save the encrusted parts. Corals always seem to grow back so fast & nice from the base. Sounds like you'll have plenty of frags to go around.. why not barter some frags with your LFS, get some new pieces of live rock to replace it? That way you'll be saving as much of the coral as possible, and won't have to stare at any unsightly dead spots or epoxy for the next few months until the new corals/coralline can grow over.

Coronus · Nov 17, 2017

29bonsaireef said:
In your case, I would take a chisel and hammer to the rock and break it up, save the encrusted parts. Corals always seem to grow back so fast & nice from the base. Sounds like you'll have plenty of frags to go around.. why not barter some frags with your LFS, get some new pieces of live rock to replace it? That way you'll be saving as much of the coral as possible, and won't have to stare at any unsightly dead spots or epoxy for the next few months until the new corals/coralline can grow over.

The rock is so nice though. I am trying avoid breaking the rock. Their has to be a way to scrape it off. Slicing imto it and using a screw driver to crack off the pieces has worked for me once.