I had time off the other day. 10 gallon water change. I removed almost all of the CC on the left side, but left a nice bed for the fish on the right. next year some time ill get the rest of it vac'd out. The fish refused to sleep in a big container of sand, but will sleep in 2 inches of crushed coral.
I made frag plugs with the sand I bought for the fish and left over crushed coral from the tank over the summer. They were cured months ago, and have been in the sump for over 2 months.
Also fiddled with some montipora fragging. I need to change my cutting situation a bit.
I have a bit of coral growing on travertine tile. I wanted to "shave" a bit of the encrusted parts off. Goodness is the tile tough.
Its diamond carbide, but boy does that sucker spin fast. Id like to get a tripod with a chain lock and put a water dripper in position. I wussed out after a few cuts of either killing the coral or cutting my finger off. Until I get a face shield this is not gonna happen again. I probably will need to ditch this for something with less hp.....possibly even a handheld drill.
It cuts like butter though. I think that is what scared me.
Over the summer I made these & cured these for months in a 5 gallon bucket. I would change the water out every weeks with water change. They have been in my sump for 2 months unused.
2 parts argonite sand, 1 part portland, 1 part crushed coral. egg carton mold. I lightly glued them to a travertine tile.
The success is with the survivors. The "donors" are doing well. I am betting 60% success rate on transfer.
I broke the "mother" from a tile which was pre-cut into 4x 1" squares. The mother came off, and left 4 moon shaped circles. I trimmed the edges back to make the "frags".
Mother:
Survivors:
Potential casualties:
months ago I had a single sliver of a montipora get loose, and I glued it to a random plug. I swore the thing was dead for months. one day it perked up. Im shocked, but its the bright pink
spot in the middle of the black plug
Anything is possible, and I have the time to watch it unfold. It looks more terrible than the pictures show.
Was educational. I also made some frag "plugs" that I used an ocean themed candy mold to make shapes like seashells and starfish. Ill be using them in the future.
Heres some other random photos:
My acan. Never seems to get bigger. I feed it twice a week, and it does eat.
Random spot of cyano that showed up on a frag plug. Its going away. These yuma things seem to be prolific.
my random frogspawn thing. I didn't buy it, and its doing well. It eats twice a week chunks of seafood.
Happy holidays!