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Acanthastrea thread!


Tigahboy

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jenniebutterfly

tigah, i want to get an acan, been searching, the only place that has one here wants way too much gor an ugly color, but anyways, how do you frag them, i mean i know you use the dremel and all, but how do you do it without damaging the tissue surrounding it? just wondering, jen

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Reefer Addict

Full tank shot for perspective of size, ect. Tank is an Oceanic 30g cube. Not a great picture buy you get the gist of it..

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Jennie and bigRed,

 

I just use a dremel I bought from Home Depot with a Diamond Cutter dremel bit (it looks white in the pic, but it should be silver):

 

drem1.jpg

 

drem2.jpg

 

I set it at the lowest speed so i can have more control and make more precise cuts.

 

Basically you want to find an area that you can cut a straight line in such a way that goes inbetween heads as much as possible. it's inevitable that you may have to simply cut thru a head here and there, but if your colony is healthy and you don't dremel it too many times within a short period of time, it should be okay.

 

I first make a deep and clean cut straight thru the fleshy top side. I only want to cut that area once, so I make sure I make it deep the first time around.

 

Then I work on the edges using the cut I already made as my guide. Then I cut underneath and try to match the line I made from the top. Since the edges have been cut before i cut the bottom, I have a rough point A to point B and I just connect the points.

 

All of this is occuring outside of water of course, so you want to work fast to minimize the time it is exposed to air. be prepared for major splattering of water+skeleton ooze. Wear protective goggles. I try to use clamps to hold the acan from its sides while I dremel it. And of course, keep your fingers away from the dremel bit...=)

 

sometimes the rock it has encrusted on is way too thick and it's impossible for the dremel to reach all the way thru. I then use a flat head screw driver as a chisel and hammer the screw driver the rest of the way thru. I tried chisel once, but it was so thick and it squished some heads.

 

I've been lucky and I haven't lost any heads on my mother colony yet (knock on wood)...but I hear that losing a head or two is almost inevitable most of the time. Oh, and once I had a friend who used another bit instead of the diamond cutter and it ended up killing half of the acan lord colony. He switched to diamond cutter and he didn't see that kind of loss the next time around.

 

I know this sounds bad...but I "practiced" on an acan echinata before I tried it on an acan lordhownesis. =P

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Originally posted by Reefer Addict

Partial picture of another lord frag on the bottom left.  Red micromussa frag on the right...

This one is still my favorite. red micromusssssaaaa....*drool*

 

looks like you're local, reefer addict, I'd like to drop by one day and take a look at your collection, if you don't mind. =) and I promise I'll leave my dremel at home. haha.

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Reefer Addict

lol! I don't know if you could handle all of my Trojan paraphernalia. GO TROJANS!!!! As you can tell, I am an USC grad. :)

 

I think I read somewhere that you were not much into the rivalry. No choice for me.

 

Wife went to Stanford

Both In Laws went to Stanford

Brother in law went to Washington

Other Brother in law went to UCLA

 

I'm just glad that SC's football team is kicking butt.

 

I will be posting more pic's within the next few weeks of some pretty cool stuff....

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haha. what are you going to do? rub it in my face when I get there? not as fun when I don't care at all about the USC-UCLA rivalry. afterall, I'm actually a sagehen. um...an extinct bird...but whatever. =P

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jenniebutterfly

thanks tigah, so i guess if you do have to cut through a head it is not a huge deal as long as you do not mutilate the rest. now to find a decent price on a nice acan, lol like thats gonna happen anytime soon, but ya never know, i could go to on of those lfs that has no clue what the have and they get a nice one in. hehe i can dream right :)

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jennie - you and I both. it would be a dream come true if I could pay blasto/favia prices for an acan lord colony. =)

 

rbaby - haha. i was just kidding. as much as I want that piece, I need to be mindful of the money still required for my upgrade. =/ but, if i didn't have the upgrade in store, I would definitely bid on that piece tho (not "rare" like acan lord but still nice).

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If you dont have someone already interested in those acan frags let me know how much you want shipped to miami and i will be VERY interested.

 

Thanks!

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haha...the "superman" danae? man, that sucker grows SLOOOOOWWWWLY. haha. it is actually finally encrusting over the epoxy...but still not big enough to frag...

 

I got that blue polyp danae tho...huge sucker. check out my bucket-o-fish thread for pics.

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fred, you won't be disappointed in the blue polyped monti! i've got the same sp. as tigahs and that thing seriously just catches your eye!

 

tigah- i was counting polyps on the lord frags last night and guess how many i found on my 'two' polyp frag from november? yeah....thats right...there are eight polyps now(three full sized, three mid-sized and a couple baby polyps...they all extend their feeders though, so i'm happy!!)!!!

the green atlantis frag(two polyps when bought) now has three full polyps, and three baby polyps(all extending feeders, as well!) for a whopping grand total of 6 polyps!!! that guy is growing like something else!!

 

my m. monasteriata(superman) decided to slowwwlllyyyy fade out. i can still see red polyps but can no longer see ANY base! weird, huh? oh well, i'll just have to go buy a larger piece the next time around. :D

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I had the same sort of fading happen to my "Mac's Monti" (a local M. faveolata from what I can tell)..it started out a nice fluoro green..but has faded out quite a bit (due mainly to the entire thing becoming one rampantly growing mass..lol)..ah well..these things happen.

 

I would like to grab some stuff from you guys out west though..we just don't get the influx of new stock you guys do out there. If you guys have lists of things you're willing to frag and prices..drop me a PM.

 

Cheers,

Fred

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