Where do YOU stick your zoas?

[starypotter]

Hi everyone,
I'm new to the hobby and got my first 5 zoas at reef a palooza a couple weeks ago, they're all frags from 3-10 polyps and I've acclimated them at the bottom on a makeshift frag rack. Well now I'm ready to start thinking of moving them around and seeing where in the tank they're going to go. I'm curious to know what everybody does with their frags. Do you leave them on the plugs, remove them from the plugs and stick them somewhere else? Attach them to your rock, use LR crumbles to stick them on or whatever else you do with them, I'm curious to see what people usually do with them. I think I'm going to look into learning how to remove them from the plugs soon, I'm not too much of a fan of one of the decorative style plugs that one of the vendors used. Pictures to show off your favorite spots are always welcome.
These are mine from when I first got them.

 

[rogersb]

If they are glued to a plug on rubble or a large blob of glue I pop that off and get it on my rockwork. If it's grown onto the plug, I break off the stem of the plug and it goes onto my rock. Eventually the zoas overgrow the plug and you don't even know it's there.

 

[starypotter]

If they are glued to a plug on rubble or a large blob of glue I pop that off and get it on my rockwork. If it's grown onto the plug, I break off the stem of the plug and it goes onto my rock. Eventually the zoas overgrow the plug and you don't even know it's there.

What do you do if it grows onto your rock work and you want to rearrange the rock work or frag the zoa? I like the look of the zoas almost covering the rocks, but I want to future proof as much as I can.

 

[goatcorals]

If it grows on your rock where you don’t want it, you take a razor and cut where you want to remove the zoas (scoring the section you want to remove) then you take a chisel and scrape some live rock with the removed zoas. Then you glue them to a frag plug and send them to me for free!

I sometimes leave them on the plug. I drill a hole in a piece of live rock a little larger than the plug stem. I then insert the plug and the colony has its own rock when it grows out. Then I put the rock in with the tank’s aquascape. Then if I ever have to frag or trim it, I can just take the rock out and give it a little trim. I sometimes cut out the original frag plug and insert a new frag plug. Insta-frag when the colony grows over it, which happens pretty fast in the center. Bottom line, I try to keep each colony on its own removable rock.

 

[OriginalUserName]

I like to cut some of the material off my plugs so they aren't perfectly round. That shape really sticks out in nature.

 

[Dree]

I cut off the bottom plug part of the frag, and then glue the small disc on the rock. If the zoas are on a small rubble rock, glued to the plug, I’ll remove the small rubble piece and glue that tiny piece down so it looks more natural. I have about 35 zoa colonies in my tank all ranging from low light and even shadowed, to very high light even higher than some of my SPS. And all range from high flow to low flow. Each zoa is different depending on its previous conditions.

 

[starypotter]

Seems like I'll be figuring out how to at the very least cut up some of my frag plugs. How long do you all usually wait to remove a zoa from the frag and give it it's new (semi) permanent spot if you're going to be gluing it to something else?

 

[Dree]

When I bring a frag home to put in my tank, I immediately cut the bottom plug off. Then I look to see if it’s possible to remove the small rubble rock piece that the actual zoa is on, if I can remove it, I’ll remove it right away. For placement I start them out low flow and low light and then depending on how they react over the next week, they’ll be moved to the best spot.

 

[Kremis]

when I get zoas I remove them from the plug if possible and just put them where I want them. I have zoas in low light low flow as well as the highest light in my tank with high flow.

 

[Rakie]

Frag tiles.

 

[rogersb]

I have been doing this for awhile so when I started me new tank 7 months ago I made a small sketch of the rockwork on paper. I looked at tons of pics of zoas online and went to a couple swaps then made a list of all the zoas I wanted and placed them on my paper sketch up. I wanted to give each zoa at least 6-8" to make colonies. Your goals can be larger or smaller, but this has helped me with glueing pieces in place because I know I won't be moving them later on.