Help with Acropora Frag I received.

[RLiu818]

I just received my acropora frag from reefermadess.

and the base/plug that this frag came on is a gigantic plug like rock thingy that is impossible to discretely put into my nano.

I am wondering if i can cut, or snap off the acropora from the rock base and glue it onto my live rock directly that is in my tank.

Does the acropora risk death or infection if i break it off the rock?


It already encruseted a majority of the plug rock so i would have to somehow saw it or carefully cut it with hopes of not shattering the entire piece.


If i do, however, accidentally shatter the entire frag do i end up with a big loss or alot of healthy baby frags?

 

[Len]

The safest thing for you to do is find some way of mounting the frag as is (with rock base attached). Corals sometimes don't take well to fragging and/or glueing, so I avoid it whenever possible. Recently fragged corals are more prone to infection, and glueing sometimes kills more sensitive SPS. Epoxy and super glue are both mildly toxic before it cures, so I use them only when I have to. Chances are the coral will do fine if you remove it and glue it elsewhere, but there is a chance for problems.

If you absolutely can't fit it as is, you can try to remove it by cutting it from it's base as cleanly as you can. Large, un-oiled cutting sheers work very well to make a clean cut. You can probably rock it off it's base too, but it's more risky. Remember to snip the wire/cable that they use to strap down these type of frags. If you break off pieces, more likely then not they'll be fine and will grow out as new fragments. But try to keep damage down to a minimal for the welfare of the "parent" frag.

Beautiful frag BTW!

 

[Anonymous]

I will just cut the rock off as much as I can without doing damage to the coral, then epoxy the frag to the rest of your rockwork in your nano. With a newly introducted frag, you don't want to do any cutting until it is fully recovered from the stress (~4, 5 weeks if not longer).

If the coral is not too large for your nano now, it will be in a few years. You will need to think about relocate it once it outgrow the current tank, unless you do trimming to keep it to reasonable size.

 

[Len]

Hey David,

8)

 

[Anonymous]

Nice piece! Man, I would hate to mess with that- is it possible to drill a hole in a large piece of rock already in your tank that you can set the plug into?

As David suggested, I wouldn't do anything for several weeks.

 

[jimbo327]

Yummy Pic!

In the past, I have used a hammer with a flat-head screwdriver to chisel a SPS frag from the plug. The funny thing is on my first chisel attempt, the force just cleanly seperated the SPS from the plug. It wasn't fully encrusted, so that helped. Just sharing my experience.

Jimmy