lost a few bottom dwelling frags

[Vincenzo.]

well my pistol/goby combo is Amazing! to Amazing, actually.. but the little guy is a digging menace and has buried some rare zoo's now i cannot find them, with a few other things that i cannot find, like a interesting bi valve. and along with my urchin, i have some issues keeping frags in place. all my lr is in place, i dont/cant take any piece out due to everything else attached to it. i did a little research on epoxy but most was done all outside of the tank.

so my question is, .. is it ok to just have my frag out of my dt, put the epoxy on the bottom, with everything in place..stick my hand in my dt and apply directly to lr?

or does this process need both pieces out of the water?

iv never used epoxy or glue, always just elastics, and other creative ways but it complicated and i cant now. so anyone who has any solution/answer would be helpful.

thanks,
vince

[GSM]

I've always wanted to get a pistol/goby pair.  Sounds like its pretty cool to watch.

As for mounting frags/colonies - I just happend to do this last night.  Usual story, broke a frag off while cleaning which resulted in a 1.5 hour acquascaping adventure.  I'm sure you know the drill - put in one frag, accidentally break off another! haha

I used both crazyglue (gel).  Simply take the frag (sps was what I was mounting but also good for LPS) out of the tank, put a blob of glue on the bottom, put it is the tank where you want it and wiggle it so the glue 'seats' on the rock/structure.  I hold it in place for 30sec or so until its relatively firm.  I only very rarely loose a frag doing it this way - depends on how hardy the coral is of course but I find most sps are very hardy to this (less so to poor wanter parameters).

I used expoxy for the bigger colonies and to firm up the rockstructure.  Same process.  Mix the epoxy (some dry faster than others).  Once it firms up a bit, I pull the frag our.  Put epoxy in the spot I want it, insert colony in the spot and ensure the base will hold.  I hold it in place (again, length of time depends on the type of epoxy).  Once it sets up, I take a rock or dead coral frags a use it to create a pattern on the epoxy to make is seem more natural.  Sharp lines, circles etc tend to stand out against the natural live rock.

Hope this helps,

Greg

[Vincenzo.]

ayy thanks. Ya the combo is crazy cool to watch. Knock on wood nothing collapses.  Im lucky i have all my frags on sml rock or shell. The main prob is keeping it in the same spot for a month till it attaches to the main rock. But thanks to Ray and yourself i know that its possible.
Merci, again...
Vince

[Hookup]

My process is slightly different, mainly cause I couldn't get the super-glue way to work when wet... (underwater).

I take the frag out, and super glue it to a piece of LR rubble.  That way i'm working "dry"... and the super glue set's up very well...

Then I can use epoxy to stick the frag and rubble/plug into the rockwork... the porous nature of the rubble and rocks allows the expoy to bond well... and I can push very firmly against the rubble to "smush" the epoxy into the rockwork without dmging the corals...

Also, if you have a few pieces of rubble, you can find some that "fit" like a jigsaw puzzle before stickign your coral to it and get better mounts... takes time, but since 90% of the time you're doing waterchanges/maintenance, and 9% of the time you're watching your tank, that only leaves 1% of the time to have fun doing these types of things... so enjoy it!