haha, just give him a dremel, and a coral and he cant help but say yes…
if the acan is more than 1/2 inch thick, i dont think a dremel cutting wheel will go through it. it takes a wet band saw.
Oh, I remembered the FIsh Bowl is on our local store page and google mapped the address. got it now. wasnt sure where it was, but seems pretty easy to find. rte. 1 south to dover, exit 104 west on scarborough, left or south on old route 13, 2 miles and its on the left in the plaza. Does that sound about right?
I can find it now.
That’s part of the complication. I was hoping to get a picture of the coral before hand or get a chance to go see it in person, but my car hasn’t left the drive way in 6 months and Steph’s went in the shop yesterday. Go figure. Ken can you give me a call before you leave make sure I have a way to get down to Dover?
At this point I don’t think the Acan is going to happen, but we’ll see.
[quote=“fishguy9, post:37, topic:2123”]
ok… updated fragging list for the demo…(also gonna be up for raffle!!!)
some misc shrooms of course
some small zoo colonies
a cabbage leather
purple plume gorgonian (photosynthetic)
and maybe one more…[/quote]
I don’t mean to be disagreeable, but these are all ridiculously easy to frag.
Mushrooms=scissors
Cabbage= scissors
Gorgonian= scissors and blade
Why not something that would require instruction?
Acro’s
Favia
Acan
[quote=“kaptken, post:42, topic:2123”]
if the acan is more than 1/2 inch thick, i dont think a dremel cutting wheel will go through it. it takes a wet band saw.
Oh, I remembered the FIsh Bowl is on our local store page and google mapped the address. got it now. wasnt sure where it was, but seems pretty easy to find. rte. 1 south to dover, exit 104 west on scarborough, left or south on old route 13, 2 miles and its on the left in the plaza. Does that sound about right?
I can find it now.[/quote]
if u get to kmart, u went too far
[quote=“Jocephus, post:44, topic:2123”]
[quote=“fishguy9, post:37, topic:2123”]
ok… updated fragging list for the demo…(also gonna be up for raffle!!!)
some misc shrooms of course
some small zoo colonies
a cabbage leather
purple plume gorgonian (photosynthetic)
and maybe one more…[/quote]
I don’t mean to be disagreeable, but these are all ridiculously easy to frag.
Mushrooms=scissors
Cabbage= scissors
Gorgonian= scissors and blade
Why not something that would require instruction?
Acro’s
Favia
Acan[/quote]
[quote=“fishguy9, post:40, topic:2123”]
ABSOLUTELY! im trying to talk jon into doing the acan… i have no idea how, so i am not an option!! lol[/quote]
[quote=“Gordonious, post:43, topic:2123”]
At this point I don’t think the Acan is going to happen, but we’ll see. [/quote]
i also have a decent torch if the acan doesnt fly… but its prolly the easiest of them all! we have a decent amount of sps in, but nothing decent sixe for fragging, and i dont see how most of them r any different to frag than a euphyllia ir such. cut and glue. its up to u guys if u wanna do the acan or not.
BUT, keep in mind, not everyone attending the frag fest had fragged most of these items. im sure a good number has never fragged anything. so all of these will be good for the newer folks as well. and the gorgonian was thrown in to mix it up, and one more tougher coral to frag, which in came the acan. although not the brightest or colorful of the acans, would still demonstrate the technique for propagating them.
The presentation is directed not just towards the extremely advanced and I am not going to go over anything ground breaking. I am not doing this to prove I can do something special. A caveman could frag an acan by throwing it against a wall or banging it against a bigger rock, but that doesn’t mean he knows what he is doing and that it will survive. “The demonstrations will include a little information about each of the corals including selections of healthy specimens, when and why the corals should be fragmented, safety precautions to follow, several techniques for fragging each coral, tools used in fragging, and several methods for attachment and mounting frags.†Lots of information besides just how to get the corals to break into pieces.
You have to think back to the time when you first got in this and you had a prized colony of zoanthids or bought a very beautiful Ricordea polyp and were terrified you would kill it if you fragged it. Or you did frag the Ric and tried to glue it right to another rock and it just floated away. It is comforting for some people to watch someone else do it first before they try it on the animals they have been struggling just to keep alive.
I also will probably be going over propagation in general. Ways to help things grow faster. When, if ever, it could be profitable.
Hopefully it won’t just be me talking either. It would be best if other people could share their experiences as well. We can discuss and debate topics as a group.
Joe your first recommendation for something more advanced is actually the simplest coral to fragment. Acropora are as easy as it gets and a lot simpler then the softies. When most people have trouble is when they try to frag a specimen that is not healthy or when they try to keep it in a tank in which the water chemistry is off. There are several different ways to go about it and different methods for faster propagation which we have gone over in previous meetings and I can repeat. I will see if I can get an acro to frag, but I will at least talk about it a bit.
There is not “a” technique for propagating Acans or Favia. If it is small a dremel may work depending on the bit. If it is a boulder then I need a wet tile saw. I do not own a wet tile saw. As I said I have not seen the Acan specimen at the fish bowl, so I am not sure what would be required. .
Fragging an Acan or Favia would be very messy and require more set up. I am going to be pulling corals in and out of tanks and buckets and dripping water every where and when you bring surge strips and power tools to the table it gets a little more dangerous. This is the first demonstration we are doing like this and I did not want to get into all of that.
I have also never fragged an acan. I have fragged one favia in the past, but it was a long time ago and the method was… very primitive.(hammer) I am not really prepared to give an instructional presentation on something I have never really done.
awesome points jon… and the acan is on a flattish rock, about an inch and a half thick. so it most likely WOULD need something bigger really. no biggie really, i think the presentation is gonna be fun and look forward to doing it.
Well as long as a few get some benefit it is worthwhile. I understand that Jon isn’t “Jon the Coral Fragging Machine” (just yet) and may not have every piece of equipment known to man. Should still be a good demo.
I just picked up the raffle items from Andy and the tickets from Marty. Will see everyone later tonight!
sweet, i cant wait gonna be so much fun… im bringing my green button zoa as for some reason they arent doign well… the only ones, so i thought u guys could have a look at them maby nudis or spiders or sumthin…
It looks like I will be joining everyone at the Fishbowl tonight. We ended up coming home a day early. See you all tonight.
Ellen
just want to thank everyone who showed up tonight. i think the demo went very smooth and it was great to see so many faces. i hope everyone was happy with the set up and all the new frags jon cut up for ya. who knows, maybe somebody learned something along the way! i did…
we were very honored to be able to host an event like this and hope to get the opportunity to do it again soon.
(btw, who stole the remaining cookies??!!!) lol
It was a lot of fun, and i learned a lot. AND Spent a lot… i have to say it was well planned and much better than i expected.
fun n friendly like always…first meeting ive been to since slaving for tax season!
im happy i didnt frag my devils hand and stick it back in my DT, i knew the stonies would hate it, but i didnt know it was that bad until tonight.
Had fun
[b]BIG THANKS TO THE FISH BOWL FOR HOSTING THIS EVENT!!![/b]Thanks everyone who made it out.
Thanks Ken and Glen for bringing additional items to frag up and add to the raffle.
and
Thank you, thank you, thank you to the Fish Bowl for graciously hosting the event.
The cookies were great and everything was set up very nice. I too hope we can do this again. Perhaps we will line up something again early next year.
I really hope the corals do well for everyone. If anyone has any questions at all about the corals they took home, make a new thread and ask as much as you would like or if you don’t want to ask publicly shoot me a private message and I will be happy to help.
I really hope people learned something useful. Please remember to be safe(safety glasses, and gloves) and also to wash up afterwards.(I just finished cleaning and drying all the tools I bought)
Oh and thanks to Steph for agreeing to handle the raffle tickets for us at last minute.
Keep posted to the board and we will begin discussing our next event at the high school on Monday Oct. 19th.
o ya, sorry everyone with my fathers obsession with raffles… he was upset after losing with 40 bucks at macna, and he was still in the buying a lot mode, so sorry… did everyone get something?
[quote=“longballz84, post:56, topic:2123”]
im happy i didnt frag my devils hand and stick it back in my DT, i knew the stonies would hate it, but i didnt know it was that bad until tonight.[/quote]
Devils hand, aka Lobophytum are one of the worst. Right up there with Toadstolls, aka Sarcophyton. Some people debate the use of carbon in reef systems, but there isn’t a thing in this hobby that isn’t debated. Personally if you have leathers in with stony corals I would run carbon in your system at least two weeks out of every month.