When you glue the frags onto the plugs, discs or live rock rubble it is important to use just the right amount of glue. Too little and the frag won’t hold tight, and will probably blow away easily considering you will want to keep the newly cut frags in some moderate flow for a week or so while they recover. Too much glue and the glue will ooze out from the bottom sides of the new frag. When this happens it is going to slow down the new growth a lot. You want just enough glue to hold it down, but not oozing out the sides. IME, what works best is to make a little pile of super glue gel onto a piece of paper or cardboard and then I use a toothpick to apply the glue to the plug. Also, it is a good idea to keep a bowl of tank water handy to dip the frags into RIGHT AWAY after you glue them on. The super glue gel heats up a lot when it is drying/curing. You don’t have to leave them under water, just sort of a flash curing. Be careful though as the glue will still not be dry at this point, and can frags can still fall off or moved if bumped.
Ideally what you want is just like a drop of super glue gell underneath the middle of the frag and then you want the flesh around the base of the frag to be in direct contact with the plug/disc without glue between it and the plug. This is kind of hard to explain without pictures, but basically you want to avoid using so much glue that it oozes out the sides of the bottom of the frag. Another thing that can happen is accidentally getting glue on the upper portions of the polyps. When this happens there isn’t much you can do except try to wipe it off and hope it doesn’t kill the polyp.
It’s not the easiest to make such small frags and have a high percentage of survival. When I first started doing this I would lose more than 50% of the new frags until I perfected my methods. Now I am consistently up to around 85%. It’s a lot like surgery. I also recommend wearing eye protection and rubber gloves due to the possibility of toxins squirting you in the eye.
Also, the exacto blades that you can get at craft stores work much better than the standard razer blades for me. Whatever you have an easier time holding is what I would recommend. Just make sure that you use clean blades every fragging session and to rinse your tools in freshwater when done to avoid getting rust on them, even stainless steel tools will rust eventually, so I like to keep them clean.
Another thing I try to do is time my fragging events with carbon changes, and also I like to get them done right before I shut the lights out for the night. I have noticed that I have better results when they go into the dark right after being sliced up.
Anyway, I think my boss would like it if I get back to work. These methods may not work for everyone but they have been working for me with great success for well over a year now on a consistent basis. Hopefully some of the others with dedicated prop/frag tanks that do this often can chime in on what has worked and what hasn’t worked for them.
PS> I will try to get some diagrams and other things done for my website over the holiday weekend and hopefully that will help with my explanations.
Jeremy
