Kraylen
New member
So..........
Only having one real reef shop in town you have to be quick when supplies come in or you'll never get them, frag plugs are the worst. I ended up ordering my own and waiting forever to get them and I thought they were kinda expensive for what they were. Rubble is cheap but sometimes hard to place for frags to grow out.
I researched various ways to make plugs/disks on several sites. Most people made cement plugs.. makes sense, seems easy enough but there are so many arguments on cement in the reef tank I ended up saying screw it... same with my lace rock ideas a while ago I figured it was more a risk than anything. Some people use silicone and sand which I thought was strange, pass. I saw a guy do some with glue and a bunch of crushed up stuff.
Super glue and sand? Seems easy and messy. Well... super glue gel is not cheap at all and sometimes the ending cost can be just as much as a pack of frag plugs. It takes about 1 gram of super glue to make a decent disk and about .3 to make a foot for the plug(if desired). If you buy loctite and what not and look at how many grams you are actually paying for its crazy. This is where Wallyfaceland comes in... Wal*Mart has some cheap super glue liquid that is cyanoacro based so its reef save... you get like 12 grams for 97 cents...
Name brand SG Gel 3-4 grams x 3.99
Generic SG Liquid 11-12 grams x 0.97
Bag of sand to match your existing sandbed = 15-25.00
I bought 50 4-packs of SG liquid and some sand from the LFS.....
I went to work, tried many prototypes and glued a lot of stuff together on accident. I figured out the perfect recipe for cool little disk.
I call them Ghost Disks because of you keep frags on your sand bed due to lack of prop tank these match your substrate and basically look like the coral is growing on the sandbed.
On to the DIY.
You will need:
-Cheap walmart SG gel(more the better, you can make 1,000 plugs with 20lb of sand)
-Rubbermaid style tub/storage thing
-Reef sand, get a dry bag.. much better, dont worry about rinsing till later.
-Cup to pour sand with.
-Bone cutters(optional)
Get your super glue ready to roll. What I did was remove the caps from about 25 of them and set them close to my work area.
This is the plastic bin I will be using to pay the plugs out in. When I pour my sand in I want to do a very thin layer. The deeper the layer of sand, the thicker the plugs will be and the harder it will be to press a nice strong plug.
Here is my cup and a small layer of the substrate in the bin.
Here is a random lid to put my uncapped super glue and my curing plugs.
Keep your cup full of sand. After laying glue down in dots you will pour a small hill of sand over the glue and press down lightly on the plug.
Thin layer of sand.
You can use the cap of the glue or you can use it capless. If you don't use the tip for a guide you risk the puncture squirting the glue in crooked. When you lay the glue down you want to make a puddle and watch the shape of it to make sure its like a circle.
After laying a disk or two down(away from each other) you want to put a little hill over the glue.
Press the glue down to desired plug form. If you press real lightly, or just with the weigh of the sand filled cup, your plug look more like a sand cake if that's what you want. If you give it a little pressure real fast while the glue is fresh, it will hit the bottom of the bin(good) and create a shiny smooth surface on one side of the plug and a rough side on the other. I frag corals onto the smooth sides and attack to rocks/lay in sandbed with the rough side.
I use the plastic/rubbermaid bin for this reason, sometimes the plugs will stick to the bottom. Super glue and rubbers/plastics dont like each other so they seldom stick. When they do just put pressure on the bin around the stuck plug and it will pop off just fine.
Pretty simple, I made about 300 of these in 30 minutes.
Only having one real reef shop in town you have to be quick when supplies come in or you'll never get them, frag plugs are the worst. I ended up ordering my own and waiting forever to get them and I thought they were kinda expensive for what they were. Rubble is cheap but sometimes hard to place for frags to grow out.
I researched various ways to make plugs/disks on several sites. Most people made cement plugs.. makes sense, seems easy enough but there are so many arguments on cement in the reef tank I ended up saying screw it... same with my lace rock ideas a while ago I figured it was more a risk than anything. Some people use silicone and sand which I thought was strange, pass. I saw a guy do some with glue and a bunch of crushed up stuff.
Super glue and sand? Seems easy and messy. Well... super glue gel is not cheap at all and sometimes the ending cost can be just as much as a pack of frag plugs. It takes about 1 gram of super glue to make a decent disk and about .3 to make a foot for the plug(if desired). If you buy loctite and what not and look at how many grams you are actually paying for its crazy. This is where Wallyfaceland comes in... Wal*Mart has some cheap super glue liquid that is cyanoacro based so its reef save... you get like 12 grams for 97 cents...
Name brand SG Gel 3-4 grams x 3.99
Generic SG Liquid 11-12 grams x 0.97
Bag of sand to match your existing sandbed = 15-25.00
I bought 50 4-packs of SG liquid and some sand from the LFS.....
I went to work, tried many prototypes and glued a lot of stuff together on accident. I figured out the perfect recipe for cool little disk.
I call them Ghost Disks because of you keep frags on your sand bed due to lack of prop tank these match your substrate and basically look like the coral is growing on the sandbed.
On to the DIY.
You will need:
-Cheap walmart SG gel(more the better, you can make 1,000 plugs with 20lb of sand)
-Rubbermaid style tub/storage thing
-Reef sand, get a dry bag.. much better, dont worry about rinsing till later.
-Cup to pour sand with.
-Bone cutters(optional)
Get your super glue ready to roll. What I did was remove the caps from about 25 of them and set them close to my work area.
This is the plastic bin I will be using to pay the plugs out in. When I pour my sand in I want to do a very thin layer. The deeper the layer of sand, the thicker the plugs will be and the harder it will be to press a nice strong plug.
Here is my cup and a small layer of the substrate in the bin.
Here is a random lid to put my uncapped super glue and my curing plugs.
Keep your cup full of sand. After laying glue down in dots you will pour a small hill of sand over the glue and press down lightly on the plug.
Thin layer of sand.
You can use the cap of the glue or you can use it capless. If you don't use the tip for a guide you risk the puncture squirting the glue in crooked. When you lay the glue down you want to make a puddle and watch the shape of it to make sure its like a circle.
After laying a disk or two down(away from each other) you want to put a little hill over the glue.
Press the glue down to desired plug form. If you press real lightly, or just with the weigh of the sand filled cup, your plug look more like a sand cake if that's what you want. If you give it a little pressure real fast while the glue is fresh, it will hit the bottom of the bin(good) and create a shiny smooth surface on one side of the plug and a rough side on the other. I frag corals onto the smooth sides and attack to rocks/lay in sandbed with the rough side.
I use the plastic/rubbermaid bin for this reason, sometimes the plugs will stick to the bottom. Super glue and rubbers/plastics dont like each other so they seldom stick. When they do just put pressure on the bin around the stuck plug and it will pop off just fine.
Pretty simple, I made about 300 of these in 30 minutes.
