Securing Tubipora musica?

[Kurt_Nelson]

As the title says... looking for ideas from folks that have had this one. How did you secure it? It's so open on the bottom with all the little tubes that I just can't see superglue really grabbing onto anything. And I'm afraid of putting too much pressure on it by mushing it into epoxy.

I originally had the colony sitting on the sandbed close to where my clown fish hangs out. The colony has "moved" twice now in two days, and we haven't seen who-done-it. Pretty sure "nemo" is doing his tail flutter thing and whipping up a current around it. Since it's so lightweight, it just bounces across the sand. (He killed a bubble coral like this by flicking sand up into it on a daily basis. Grrr.)

So tonight, I moved it to a safer spot on a rock flat. But I'm pretty sure snails will end up eventually pushing it around. Any thoughts?

 

[Fluff]

I always thought they grew matted. I've never kept one though, so I've learned something. Could you possibly tie it down somehow with cotton thread? Even if only to a piece of rubble that could then be glued or epoxied? Or even a frag disk? Just a thought.

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

It is matted, but just to itself. It's made up of a bunch of little tubes that are all connected to each other... alot like honeycomb. It's not attached to any rock at all.

Yeah... I've thought about glueing it to a rock as an anchor, but the bottom of the coral is so convoluted because it's just a matrix of tubes, there's not much area to glue to. I'd have to form a little epoxy cradle or something and then gently glue it to that. I was just hoping someone had one of those "why didn't I think of that!" type ideas.

Anyway... I think the question might not even matter in a few weeks. For whatever reason, LiveAquaria felt that this shipment didn't deserve a heat pack (grrrrrrrr...) and the little guy just doesn't seem like it's going to make it. It took a couple days to even open up fully, and then has been declining steadily each day. I'd say less than a 1/4 of the polyps were even open yesterday. LiveAquaria doesn't know if they screwed up, or if their shipping people decided our weather didn't warrant a heat pack. (Hmmm... our high temps that day were in the low-mid 50s. Go figure.) They extended my warranty by another week, but I'm pretty sure the thing will still hang on past then. But it just doesn't seem like it's going to make it.

 

[Innovator]

If it makes it, what about fishing line?

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

Y'mean like loop fishing line over it and glue the ends of the fishing line down to the rock?

 

[Innovator]

I would just run the line through the tubes and tie it around a piece of liverock (some have enough spacing for this; otherwise you can drill a small hole in the base and anchor that way), use smaller pieces of liverock to form a cove so it stays in place, or make a dam out of epoxy around the base so it will stay snug, but not stuck to the epoxy.