love smite for old time's sake?

TheFilterguys.com

honestly the plugs from these guys are great! cheap, no need to soak em and the owners are stand up guys ( I overpayed on shipping so they refunded me the extra 5 dollars). A+++

Here's how i make mine. I use regular s type cement for them.


I used dixie cups to form these ones.







For these ones i spread out cement on a trash bag and used a piece of PVC as a "cookie cutter".





Heres both of them on some egg crate so you have an idea of the size of the two.



As for curing i soak them in distilled white vinegar for 48 hour and then i soak them in fresh water for 24 hours to make sure all the vinegar is removed.

Heres some pink stylo, white montipora and green candy cane frags



Heres another pick of the candy canes.

How does the cement disks affect pH?

So far not at all, I do add a PH supplement that keeps it at 8.3 or 8.4. And if you think about it even if i did add sand to the mix i would still be adding cured cement to the water.

Acro I am going to try your idea. How many of the PVC sized ones do you think an eighty pound bag would make?

Thousands upon thousands, I didnt even use 3 pounds of it to make all of the frag plugs (cookie cut frag plugs and the dixie cup frag plugs). If you used the whole bag you would have frag plugs for life!

Awsome thank you.

OMG thats fraging hilarious, I havnt laughed that hard in a long time

i use the free marble tile samples from the hardware store. i just grab a boatload, soak em in my sw curing tank and just pop some frags on em. within a few months they get covered in coralline and work great. the tile names printed on them even help me id when the frags were made

lol

awesome idea!

I just made ~120 plugs in about 30 minutes using acroporalokani's s-type cement idea, small dixie cups and large dixie cups, probably used about 3 lbs of an 80lb bag

Disks have now been in vinegar for 24 hours, another day and I'll rinse and soak them in water... woohoo!

More updates with no pics!!!!

I have half of the new racks made, which means half the frag tank is final, and the other half temporary concerning racks...

I made about 20 frags, mostly monti caps, digitata, and some green confusa, oh and a white w/ purple polyps monti, hopefully saving the strain thats been getting harrased by red algae.. .

glass beads work well without causing any param issues IMO.

Theyre small, and get covered fast... not to mention theyre way cooler looking that frag plugs IMO.

Just be sure if you go fancy beads, you dont get any that are fumed... a fumed piece of glass has silver/gold/cobalt burned into the glass and might release some harmful stuff.


Vote = Borosilicate

Kraylen eats glass for breakfast.

How did they turn out?

Take a piece of rock and smash it, then you have many many pieces to frag on

So far so good, a couple were a little crumbly, but I think that was the water/cement mixture. I'm in the process of getting a 10g tank up and running with which I'll do water changes from the frag setup into this 10G to make sure the frags are good to go when I need them, 10g complete w/ chaeto, and two hob filters..


I've probably made about 20-30 frags so far, and getting ready to make my second batch of discs... we'll see how they turn out

is it possible to detach the coral thats grown on it? Or should I let it grow off onto the rock then just break it off?

Unfortunately those frag discs did something fierce on my tank and sucked alk and dropped the pH, lost a bunch of frags(the mother colonies are in my show tank, no real loss there). Mostly lost time, but will be sticking with Boston Aqua Farms reef plugs and discs from now on, as my primary buyer, a reef store in CO, is moving to solelyl BAF Plugs and discs as well, and makes it an easy choice for them.

+1... thats my method as well

ya DIY does feel good... but in this case i would say just go buy the damn things and stop inhaling cement dust....

Yeah, I quit with the cement

My Local reef store started carrying Boston Aqua Farms plugs and discs. Since I trade w/ them to the tune of about ~$150 a month, I usually pick up three or four 20ct bags at a time.. for cost

i have a question cant you just go dig rocks out of the woods and cure them and use them?

Did you cure your frag discs? It's recommended you cure cement discs for about 6 months or until they do not affect Ph levels. You can do this in a bucket that you change the water out of every week or so. Or in the basin of your toilet. May want to give homemade plugs another try.

Yes I did cure my frag discs, but, when it comes down to it, the main store I supply likes the boston aqua farms plugs over anything else, and will give an extra $5 per frag for them, since I get em at store cost(I'm told) which is ~$4 a bag of 20, that makes the cost about 20 cents a piece... I'm not gonna worry about the time wasted making frag discs, curing them, and then betting my frag tanks happiness on them again.

^now thats logic....

When ever you are at your lfs just look through there Base / Dead rock bin. 1.99 lb and its natural looking. Put your frags on those the same way you would put it on a plug.

bzphotog

Pics or it didn't happen !

I agree with this, I do enjoy DIY stuff but with the cheap price of plugs I just dont see the need in making them and curing them to save 10 cents per plug. Curing plugs for 6 months is insane in my opinion and thats why I like the ceramics, rinse them off and they are ready to use.

You like the aragonite sand coated you wienner !

( I know you to well )

Nice I was thinking of using the jello shooter cups from the party store instead of the small dentist cups

Man I need a new frag plug solution, ordering them is not always an option and no LFS here within logical driving distance works. I may just use plastic screws.

I have played around with a few different types of plugs. The tiles from lowe's are nice, but they are heavy and weight down racks that are suctioned on. Buying them sucks, because they kill you on shipping. I want to make my own, but I don't want them to go in the back of my toilet for 3 months...that kind of defeats the purpose for me.

Well I have a kiln so I think Im going to take a shot at making some ceramic plugs. Anyone got a link?

If you don't want to do the toilet tank for a couple months there are a couple different things you can do. Steam curing can cut out 2-4 weeks of the curing time, and for frag plugs it can be accomplished in a double boiler on a stove. Just don't get them over about 160F; the cheap corallife digital thermometers measure up that high no problem, I've gotten mine up to 162 but it'll probably go even higher.

After that you can CO2 cure them in a 5g bucket, I'm experimenting with using a 2l bottle about 3/4 full of water with a cup of sugar and a packet of yeast attached to an air stone and its keeping a whole bucket full of DIY rocks at around 7 pH. I've been to busy/lazy to cast any new rocks in the last couple weeks but it looks like I should be able to do smaller rocks and frag plugs from casting to ready to use in 10-14 days.

I NEED MORE IDEAS GUYS!

What about a 2 part epoxy.. aquamend. Make the disc and stick your plastic screw on the bottom.

Too expensive, I picked up a 12lb bag of sand and about 250g of super glue for about 35 bucks so we'll see how this goes.

Dixie Cup
Wooden Dowel
Aragonite sand (or inert silica sand)
Wet Casting Sand (anything you want)
Cyanoacrylate Superglue

1.) Casting sand into dixie cup
2.) Push wooden dowel in to create plug
3.) Do not fill w/ casting sand all the way to the top
4.) Fill in plug sand
5.) Drop in some superglue
6.) Wait for it to set and remove

Make sure to cure them in some test water and watch for the pH, Alk, Cal, and Phos.

I would not go with CO2 curing concrete, it is not the optimal way and can often do more harm than good.

Any updates on how this went? I've still gone with the method of selling one frag, to buy a ton of plugs.
Plus one of the LRS pays $5 more for frags on their custom plugs(which are really nice diy, and cost $0.25)

Yeah, he got everything, made a pictorial how-to thread, deleted the pics and post several hours later because he decided to pursue it for profit then was later banned for unrelated offenses.

It appeared to work quite well, just lay down 1/4" of sand in a plastic tray and drip on tubes of cheap superglue. When they dry they just pop off if you use the right kind of tray, I believe his was polypropylene. Most of the clear rigid storage bins you'll find are polypropylene, the recycling number on the bottom is 5.

Interesting, but he posted three days ago?

haha, all in good fun...

If someone could make silicone frag plug molds that would be awesome. Sell them for like $25 a mold. Each mold could do probably 20 frag plugs then they can just pop out since the silicone is bendable. Someone on here I'm sure can do this. I take a free one since I had the idea;)

Im gonna try this out let you know how it goes for me

I have never fragged a coral before but the smashing of liverock sounds so much easier and faster and the benefit of keeping it all natural. What is the major Pros with DIY plugs versus liverock for frags?

rumble
pro, its free (if you have a lot of rocks lying around), looks natural
con, some shapes wont stay still on egg crate or will just fall out.

frag plugs
pro, it fits in egg crate. reusable (super glue a live rock ontop of it with the frag, break the rock off the plug and reuse it again)
con, sticks out like a sore thumb in display tanks

Check out my thread and let me know what type of frag plug/disk works best!!

I use for sps frag plugs a acrylic rods. i get them for cheap at this sighn place that have a acrylic scrap section. for the rack i use a acrylic to and drill holes in it to fit the rods i just heat up the rod so it kind of globs and wont fall through the hole. when the acro grows over the acrylic it look ways legit. kinda diy and easy win win won