Mounting a soft colt coral

[Reefdweller]

I have a cutting from a colt coral that I have tried mounting 3 times using toothpicks and rubberbands. The tissue of the coral keeps ripping away from the toothpick and floating away. Any suggestions on how to mount this soft creature so it doesn't keep floating around my tank.

Thx,

 

[luumanfoo29]

I've superglued some softies onto rocks. they all ended up doing fine.

 

[Tstone]

wedge it in a crack. Or just wrap the rubber band around it and the rock.

Another option is to drop some rubble into a small cup and then place the coral in the cup. The idea is that the current won't pull it out of the cup.

 

[JayM]

I've superglued some softies onto rocks. they all ended up doing fine.

Make sure the superglue is the gel type (learned that in the newbie class, thanks Richard!)

 

[JohnK]

IME colt corals can be difficult to mount because they are so slimy. I had similar difficulties with them.

Edit; I never had any luck mounting colts with superglue, too slimy to stick.

The trick with the toothpick / rubberband method seemed to be not putting any pressure on the tissue, ie push the toothpick through and then rubberband it on a rock so that the bottom of the frag was sitting loosely in a crevice in the rock it's attached to, but not pressed against it.

Also, as marvin suggested, putting the cutting in a cup of rubble with mild flow is probally a good method for colts.

 

[Chris L]

put a piece of net on top of it to keep it from floating away and it should anchor

 

[JohnK]

yea, that's a good suggestion also. You can do that with "bridal veil" from walmart in the fabric section.

 

[Triggerfish]

i hear ya.. no matter what i tried the colt would not stay put. it always managed to either release or shed itself away.
the cup method may work...just redirect flow away from it..won't take much to spin it out of there..

 

[Duds]

heres what i learned from eric borneman I watch this hour long video of fragging corals and the way he said to get the corals to stick to the rock was by using fishing line and a needle thread it through the colt coral about an 1" from the place sticking to the rock and then take fishing line out of the needle and tie the excess string around a rock make sure there is sting on both sides of the colt coral, so it will be somewhat easy tieing it

you use fishing line because it doesnt deteriorate like thread does

hope this helps
Thanks
Duds

 

[saltnut]

I just tried fragging some items a couple weeks ago. Using a couple plastic cups, cut down to about 2" filled with rubble and put inside a media bag. 1st cup had 4 items in it different mushrooms and polyps, no colt colt coral. I gave the whole cup away after 1 week. I know 1 item stuck to the cup and 1 item stuck to the rubble. It was unclear what the other 2 items did. Last I heard all items were still alive and out of the cup. The second cup with 4 items also, all mushrooms after 2 weeks. 3 of 4 stayed on rubble #4 stuck to the cup so I peeled it off and started over.