Screw frag plugs!

[sunkool]

I bought a beautiful coral from a LFS last week, and it had a plug that had a blue milk cap inside of it. I saw this before but thought nothing of it but this time it gave me an idea of what this is for.

I took a water bottle and cut the top off just under the thick ring.
then I used Aqua Mend to attach the bottle top to a rock.



Then I took the cap from the bottle, and covered it with white portland diy rock. The cap is flat to the cement.



Top view.



Then I screwed the plug onto the rock.



This is a great way to attach frags to the back wall.


By the way here is the coral I got from my LFS.

[rustybucket145]

that's screwed up!

[chrismhaase]

What a great idea. You are a genius!! I am definitely going to do this in the future.

[slandis3]

A little twist to this would be drop a magnet into the cap, fill it with epoxy now you can stick it to the glass and move it where ever you want.

[jman77]

cool idea sunkool,

Did you make the rock in the first pic ? If so, how did you get it to come out like that?

[sunkool]

Yes I made it. It is made by putting calcium carbonate (crushed coral) with white portland. Mix on the dry side.

[NanoReefWanabe]

looks great but waiting for the "plugs" to cure would be a pain in the butt...i guess i could make some now though for my new tank next year...

i personally still really like the idea of using plastic golf tees

[lvpd186]

One of the guys is a local club here tried plastic golf tees and he didn't have any luck with them. From what he said they were so light that they would blow off of the frag rack, plus they didn't have a lot of surface area to work with.

[GrandeGixxer]

I hate frag plugs as well, this is a good idea though. That is a beautiful coral BTW! When will you be fraggint it?

[steven_dean17]

That's a great fraggin idea, hope I don't screw it up.

[hahnmeister]

Cool Idea. I just get out the ceramic bit on the drill and put holes in the rocks for plugs to go into.

[sunkool]

Thanks everyone
The problem with drilling the rocks is that I wnat to attach frags to my back wall. If I ever want to remodel the tank or even move the tank, I can just remove without breaking the coral

Here is an older pic of my back wall

[sunkool]

Originally posted by NanoReefWanabe
looks great but waiting for the "plugs" to cure would be a pain in the butt...i guess i could make some now though for my new tank next year...

Lets test that theory. I have put small rocks in the tank and no problems but this is the first time putting a frag on the rock before coraline started to grow on it.
I superglued a peice of monti cap and another sps to the plug.
I think it is a millie. someone corect me if I am wrong.

I made the plug on Sunday 12/16 and put it in the tank for the first time last night. I put the frags on at 10:15 this morning.



I will get a better pic when the polyps open back up.

[rustybucket145]

sunkool, also known as sunkist?

[sunkool]

Originally posted by rustybucket145
sunkool, also known as sunkist?

???
Sunkool tinting & Signs

[rustybucket145]

gotcha, I used to have a friend in fla that had a nickname 'sunkist', thought you might be him. sorry

[impur]

Thats a great idea. Looking forward to how those frags grow on it.

[stugray]

The only problem I see is that once the corals grow, you may not be able to spin it around enough times to get it free.

If the threads were only maybe 1/4 turn then most corals could be removed. With the regular cap threads, you are talking 2-3 turns before it comes loose.

One of the points of frag plugs is: put tiny frag in place, remove big colony later. This may not work if I have to turn the colony 2-3 times to remove it.

Stu

[impur]

For me, the point of frag plugs is: glue tiny frag in place, let grow till almost encrusted, add to reef so you can't see plug. Let reef grow. I don't know why you would want to remove it after its grown out and huge. You can frag off branches easy if thats why, but unless you just like to move stuff frequently, it seems this is ideal.


Hey Sunkool, is that rock you glued the frag rock to a MMR rock?

[sunkool]

yes

[impur]

Nicely done. You just use small amounts and pile it up to get it so porous?

I'm getting close, but yours looks perfect!

[tcmfish]

A cool idea would be to make a rock with the female ends all over it and then mount all your frags on the male end so then when you sell them you could maybe sell the rocks too and it would give people a secure place to put their new frags and they could mix and match to their liking.