first time fragger needs advice

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by albert_dao

Next time you're by, Sean, I'll show you my techniques. Super easy.

cool, I'll definately ask next time i'm buy. it'll be soon, too cuz i'm outa salt

just today I put a zap strap on one of the branches of the finger leather and tightened it a bit till it was slightly bulging. tomorrow i'm going to tighten it a bit more. I'm assuming this technique is the same old farmers used to castrate their livestock I think there'll be less chance of infection this way. I'm not impatient about it anyways.





it REALLY didn't like me manhandling it to put on the zap strap lol. It's polyps are back out now though

on another note, my frag/refugium tank is almost ready to tap into my system. I'm just giving the water in it a day to mix and aerate before I hook it up. Problem I found though is the clearance is so little I won't have room for my MH light so I'm gonna hafta watch the buy/sell threads for some t5 or pc lighting. I'll be using my coralife mini 18W lights (x2) and just put whatever frags I get on egg crate way up close to the lights in the mean time.

[kwirky]

ok so I fragged 10 pieces off the mother colony. All the pieces are 1" or larger, some almost 2" in length. Well sized frags. I did the cutting with a scalpal. Albert showed me using scissors, but it would have been hard to get them in there to cut the pieces cleanly. My hands now REEK of the slime they oozed out lol.

I found the slow removal with the cable ties wasn't such a good idea. I cut off the section that was being removed by the ties, and had to trim back the coral because it was yellowing where the cable ties were. Didn't want to risk infection.


the rack's located in the display tank for now in a very
high flow area (strong laminar currents). I don't trust them
in the frag tank with the way it's set up right now. The
lighting's too weak, and the flow's all haphazard ATM.


the mother colony wasn't too happy about it, but it's
polyps are out already. It's a MUCH more manageable size now that it's trimmed down.

The large toadstool's the next one. I'm going to do more research, cuz of it's size.

[Farrmanchu]

That looks good, you've jumped in with both feet! The cut on the mother is accessable in case there's a problem. The frags look nice, are those plugs they're on? Did you glue them? I've found that most softies kinda reject the glue after a while, but are usually attached to the plug beside the glue, by the time the glue stops sticking. So, be carefull not to blow them of the plugs with flow, as they may loosen up in the next few days.

[kwirky]

Originally Posted by Farrmanchu

That looks good, you've jumped in with both feet! The cut on the mother is accessable in case there's a problem. The frags look nice, are those plugs they're on? Did you glue them? I've found that most softies kinda reject the glue after a while, but are usually attached to the plug beside the glue, by the time the glue stops sticking. So, be carefull not to blow them of the plugs with flow, as they may loosen up in the next few days.

they're fastened down on the plugs with fishing wire. Albert_dao showed me the technique. the plugs have little holes in them to feed the line through. They're strapped on the plugs very firmly.

I was more worried about getting good clean cuts, than anything. The branches were too bunched up to use scissors, and I even had a hard time with the scalpal.

Not bad, though, i think for a first timer