Fixing onto rocks.

[yamanjazz]

Hi all, i was wondering what you guys use to stick coral frags onto rocks. Please note that ive never done this before, so all hints and tips are very welcome.
Thanks in advance:)

[Crown Royal]

You can use any of the many epoxy adhesive products available at your LFS designed for exactly this purpose or use Superglue gel or both.

I use both: dab a drop or two of superglue on the frag, smoosh on some epoxy then another few drops of superglue on the epoxy before placing it into position.

Superglue gel in entirely safe to use and will actually cure better underwater.

[Fishieness]

the above method works very well for stonie corals.
however, if you are looking to frag mushrooms, zoos (i suggest to wear gloves, some secrete toxins), softies, ect, many will produce too mush slime to let you use any type of glue.
here are a few tricks:
-rubberband it to a rock
-put it in a cup with crushed coral in a low flow area, after it attaches, glue the crushed coral to the rock

[Siklid]

another thing you can do with 'softies' is get a tuperware container and litter the bottom with small stones / sand, place so the tuperware container does not get much flow but lots of light with in days your 'frags' will take hold of somthing in there that can be glued to another rock

[Crown Royal]

There's also using some kind of mesh material like for wedding veils and wrapping it around the live rock that the soft coral is placed on. This prevents the pinching and circulation cutoff that can occur with rubberbanding.

[yamanjazz]

Cheers guys, lots good info here. This gives me a choice of ways. Thanks again:)

[tuchon35]

With softies, I was taught to stick a toothpick through the coral, and glue the other end to a piece of rubble. Never had any problems,

[yamanjazz]

Is there a picture walkthrough about this topic here at AC? if so i couldnt find it, if not im sure it would help alot of us less experianced aquarist and would save alot of lives(corals :D)

[Crown Royal]

Just do a Google search: "fragging <name of coral>" and you should come up with a whole bunch of picture walkthroughs.

In general, stony corals are quite easy to frag using bone cutting pliers and superglue/epoxy. Soft corals are a bit trickier because they slime more but any of the above methods mentioned will work well.

It's really not that difficult and many softies like mushrooms are darn near impossible to kill. Heck, one way of propagating mushrooms is cutting one up into little pieces and letting the current carry them to whatever piece of live rock what end up attaching to.

[Lorna]

everything you ever wanted to know about fragging along with some really good pictures.

http://www.garf.org/

[yamanjazz]

That is one great source. Thanks for sharing :)