Blasto new heads

[RaymondNoodles]

Last night while feeding my blasto, I noticed it's popping a bunch of new heads. This got me really excited! It's one of my favorite corals. I would like to remove it from the frag plug and glue it to a rock very close to where it has been sitting for the last month or two, but now I'm hesitant to mess with it because it seems very happy. I will probably end up moving it, but mainly just wanted to show off all these cool little blasto babies.

[DevilDuck]

Your going to have a nice little colony of them!

[TheKleinReef]

if the coral is happy the colony will get big enough to cover the disc anyways. i say let it thrive a bit.

[RaymondNoodles]

8 minutes ago, TheKleinReef said:

if the coral is happy the colony will get big enough to cover the disc anyways. i say let it thrive a bit.

But frag discs are sooo ugly 😝. I guess you could look at it like braces or invisalign...

Mainly I just want to get it out of the sand because the snails are always moving it around. I could glue the whole disc to the rock, but the rock I want to put it on is covered in beautiful coralline algae, and that might hurt my soul.

[Nixperience]

Just push the plug into the sand a little and cover it. 

[JojosReef]

2 hours ago, RaymondNoodles said:

But frag discs are sooo ugly 😝. I guess you could look at it like braces or invisalign...

Mainly I just want to get it out of the sand because the snails are always moving it around. I could glue the whole disc to the rock, but the rock I want to put it on is covered in beautiful coralline algae, and that might hurt my soul.

I get an ugly piece of rubble, not too large, cut off the plug stem, glue the disk to the rock, and push the rock and disk into the sand. CUC can't knock it over then.

[RaymondNoodles]

1 hour ago, Nixperience said:

Just push the plug into the sand a little and cover it. 

 

5 minutes ago, JojosReef said:

I get an ugly piece of rubble, not too large, cut off the plug stem, glue the disk to the rock, and push the rock and disk into the sand. CUC can't knock it over then.

Good ideas. Thank you both.

[TheKleinReef]

2 hours ago, RaymondNoodles said:

But frag discs are sooo ugly 😝. I guess you could look at it like braces or invisalign...

Mainly I just want to get it out of the sand because the snails are always moving it around. I could glue the whole disc to the rock, but the rock I want to put it on is covered in beautiful coralline algae, and that might hurt my soul.

Mount the plug somewhere. Makes moving colonies like that easier down the road. Coralline will take over don’t worry about gluing on top of it. Lol

[RaymondNoodles]

9 hours ago, TheKleinReef said:

Mount the plug somewhere. Makes moving colonies like that easier down the road.

This seems contradictory. Do you mean mount the plug to a small-ish rock that can easily be moved?

 

That's what I did with my duncan...

 

[TheKleinReef]

2 hours ago, RaymondNoodles said:

This seems contradictory. Do you mean mount the plug to a small-ish rock that can easily be moved?

 

nope.

croal grows over the plug, but leaves the option to move and mount the entire colony very easily down the road if needed.

 

more branching LPS (torches, hammers, duncancs, etc) it would look very bad. but denser LPS that grow outwards this is a useful tactic to be able to move them super easily. imo

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, TheKleinReef said:

croal grows over the plug, but leaves the option to move and mount the entire colony very easily down the road if needed.

Just not too far down the road! With a blasto in a fairly stable tank, you've only got about 12 - 18 months from just a single polyp on a 1" plug before it becomes one with the rock it's on and you can no longer move it without significant damage, without even feeding it. Leaving it on the plug gives you some time, but you can't procrastinate for too long. If you want even more time, glue it to something bigger or just glue it to a moveable rock.

 

17 hours ago, RaymondNoodles said:

I will probably end up moving it, but mainly just wanted to show off all these cool little blasto babies.

That's a lot of baby polyps, so you probably won't be able to see the plug in like a year, maybe even less. If you like blastos, grab a couple other morphs and mount them together - they'll grow into a big multi-colored colony in just a few years that looks super cool, even if it's just cheap basic colors! They also do well in the sand and are very capable of pushing huge amounts of sand off their polyps, so don't worry much about that.

[mitten_reef]

I love how @jservedio just casually gave a suggestion on blasto garden and didn't include an example....

https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/414985-jacks-ext-50-lagoon/?do=findComment&comment=6035336

 

also if you haven't already, go sub/follow his thread...always fun, eye candy stuff

[RaymondNoodles]

19 hours ago, jservedio said:

Just not too far down the road! With a blasto in a fairly stable tank, you've only got about 12 - 18 months from just a single polyp on a 1" plug before it becomes one with the rock it's on and you can no longer move it without significant damage, without even feeding it. Leaving it on the plug gives you some time, but you can't procrastinate for too long. If you want even more time, glue it to something bigger or just glue it to a moveable rock.

 

That's a lot of baby polyps, so you probably won't be able to see the plug in like a year, maybe even less. If you like blastos, grab a couple other morphs and mount them together - they'll grow into a big multi-colored colony in just a few years that looks super cool, even if it's just cheap basic colors! They also do well in the sand and are very capable of pushing huge amounts of sand off their polyps, so don't worry much about that.

Thanks for the info, it's very much appreciated! I will definitely be getting more blastos in the near future...I like them but more importantly they seem to like me haha. I'm contemplating gluing the frag plug to the base of the rock in the bottom of this picture, where the sand meets the rock, but there is a lot of Kenya tree coral growing and it's spreading fast. This pic was taken on Jan 14 and I had just trimmed the Kenya Tree...

 

 

 

Jan 25 (11 days later)...

 

 

Keeping the Kenya tree from irritating the blastos might be a challenge. Kenya tree sprouts are popping up all along the base of that rock and I am contemplating gluing the blasto plug(s) over the top of the kenya tree sprouts, but I'm sure the kenya tree will just grow up/around it.

 

10 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

I love how @jservedio just casually gave a suggestion on blasto garden and didn't include an example....

https://www.nano-reef.com/forums/topic/414985-jacks-ext-50-lagoon/?do=findComment&comment=6035336

 

also if you haven't already, go sub/follow his thread...always fun, eye candy stuff

@jservedio - The humble master blasto. Very nice garden you have going there! I just looked at your thread - awesome stuff. Following ✅

[Nixperience]

15 minutes ago, RaymondNoodles said:

Thanks for the info, it's very much appreciated! I will definitely be getting more blastos in the near future...I like them but more importantly they seem to like me haha. I'm contemplating gluing the frag plug to the base of the rock in the bottom of this picture, where the sand meets the rock, but there is a lot of Kenya tree coral growing and it's spreading fast. This pic was taken on Jan 14 and I had just trimmed the Kenya Tree...

 

 

 

Jan 25 (11 days later)...

 

 

Keeping the Kenya tree from irritating the blastos might be a challenge. Kenya tree sprouts are popping up all along the base of that rock and I am contemplating gluing the blasto plug(s) over the top of the kenya tree sprouts, but I'm sure the kenya tree will just grow up/around it.

 

@jservedio - The humble master blasto. Very nice garden you have going there! I just looked at your thread - awesome stuff. Following ✅

Your tank is looking good. You should try to remove the Kenya tree all together. In the long run, it will eventually take over your tank. You won’t regret it. 

[RaymondNoodles]

On 1/28/2022 at 7:41 AM, Nixperience said:

Your tank is looking good. You should try to remove the Kenya tree all together. In the long run, it will eventually take over your tank.

Thanks, I think I just needed some motivation. I knocked this out a few days ago. I was scraping the Kenya for at least an hour. I hope my wife doesn't mind that I used her cuticle tool 🙊 And guess what, yesterday I noticed a new growth of Kenya from an area that I didn't scrape well enough. Damn. That is one resilient coral.

 

 

I also used this opportunity to move a couple corals around, changes I have been planning for a month or so and added a couple new guys - a nice little purple blasto colony 3 new zoa frags, and a pipe organ. Very happy with how it turned out. 

 

On 1/28/2022 at 7:41 AM, Nixperience said:

You won’t regret it. 

You were right! 😁

[ninjamyst]

On 1/26/2022 at 7:19 PM, RaymondNoodles said:

But frag discs are sooo ugly 😝. I guess you could look at it like braces or invisalign...

Mainly I just want to get it out of the sand because the snails are always moving it around. I could glue the whole disc to the rock, but the rock I want to put it on is covered in beautiful coralline algae, and that might hurt my soul.

Hope you know coralline algae is the worst...once it takes over your glass and equipments, you will be cursing at it.  

[RaymondNoodles]

12 hours ago, ninjamyst said:

Hope you know coralline algae is the worst...once it takes over your glass and equipments, you will be cursing at it.  

Yep, one of the downsides to recreating the ocean on a glass box. Luckily it hasn’t begun to grow anywhere but the rocks. I’ll just enjoy it now and curse it later.