Reattaching Corallimorphs

[Donya]

I just discovered some distrurbingly large white ball corallimorphs in my 12g, large enough that I don't want them in with my royal gramma (same tank) and can't really re-home them in my other tanks safely. I need to exacto them off the rock and take a couple to the LFS since they're interested in some, but the corllis need to be stuck to something. Unfortunately I'm turning up short for rubble bits to attach them to - all my rubble bits have other stuff I don't want to get rid of. I have some marine epoxy putty...it that alright as a substitute to make a little disk for attaching? I thought I saw a post here once before about that but I can't seem to find it now.

 

[Dorkhedeos]

Disks made of putty should be okay, i dont think the lfs cares what the coral is on, as long as its not gonna harm their coral.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

How big have your Corallimorphs got? I have one on a bit of my live rock and he seems to get to about 2cm across pretty quickly but then hasnt seemed to grow since.

 

[Donya]

Thanks Dorkhedeos - yeah, the LFS wasn't all that concerned about what they were attached to but I had forgotten to ask about putty while I was there.

How big have your Corallimorphs got? I have one on a bit of my live rock and he seems to get to about 2cm across pretty quickly but then hasnt seemed to grow since.

I've got one that when fully expanded reaches about 4-5cm accross the tentacles. The others are a bit smaller, in the 3-4cm diameger range. The biggest one worries me the most because I had a heck of a time getting my finger unstuck from it at one point, so I know that if my royal gramma made that mistake I'd be minus a fish. I really wish I could rehome them since the large ones are really neet looking, but I have little inverts in my other tanks that would be in danger

 

[Donya]

Uh...any suggestions for how to attach these little devils to something I actually want them on? They're so sticky I can't get them to let go of me if the tentacles touch me (which they do) and as a result I've having a heck of a time getting them to stick to anything but my hand. I'm sure there's probably some obvious trick I'm missing

 

[Adrinal]

needle and fish string. I actually just use accupuncture needles left over from welding acrylic plastic toothpicks (just remember to twist them out not pull out... like a fresh earring hole.

 

[eschaton]

I think the standard is to make "coins" out of a mix of argonite and crazy glue.

 

[Donya]

The corallimorphs have rejected my putty disks (too smooth I guess...they don't like glass either), although aparently pest nems love it, and the corallis have also proceeded to reject every other surface except aragonite rubble. Forcibly trying to make anchor them to the other surfaces didn't work, they just curled up their base wherever the target surface was and weasled over sideways to get a hold on something else. I guess I have to let them stay on the rubble if I want them to stay in one place lol.

 

[Dorkhedeos]

The corallimorphs have rejected my putty disks (too smooth I guess...they don't like glass either), although aparently pest nems love it, and the corallis have also proceeded to reject every other surface except aragonite rubble. Forcibly trying to make anchor them to the other surfaces didn't work, they just curled up their base wherever the target surface was and weasled over sideways to get a hold on something else. I guess I have to let them stay on the rubble if I want them to stay in one place lol.

try putting it on top of the disk in a tupperware box to cut most of the flow off. It should reattach if it has nothing else to grab on to. Maybe you can try scoring the putty slightly before it dries to give it some texture.

 

[Donya]

They're in an area with limited flow right now - it's a plastic mesh "box" of sorts to hold the free-floating ones while I'm waiting to attach them. They won't adhere to the plastic since it's too smooth. They are really quite nimble at wiggling away; the disk I made was around 1" in diameter for a corallimorph with a foot about 1/2" in diameter at the base, and it managed to stretch itself all the way off the disk and grab an empty shell to attach to. They just seem generally quite distressed when I try to force them onto smoother surfaces..maybe scratching the putty disk will do the trick. They act happy as soon as I let them get a hold of a little piece of aragonie...maybe I should just embed some aragonite in a putty disk compromise

The shrooms I've kept have been much easier to deal with...these guys seem more like when I tried to get my nem to go where I wanted it. Sort of like herding cats in extreemly slow motion.