Can someone tell me how to make my own frag plugs. I go through so many and it really adds up. I would like to be able to make my own and make it to my own customer shapes. Might be a cool project to do at a meeting
take some rock rubble and some 5/16 fiberglass or acrylic dowel rods and drill the rubble rock and one big rock. then use some epoxy on the rubble rock and the dowel rod and you have removable and perfectly hidable frag station and plugs.
i have heard that you can use reef sand and portland cement, and cast your own, now i do not know this myself, and i would research this for myself, but im in the concrete business, we go through about a semi truck load of "WHITE" portland a month. If anyone from this club would like some white portland cement for this use. let me know. i would be more than happy to give anyone some cement. like i said im not sure if its good for your tank, but any and all is welcome too as much as they like. Greg PS its type 1 white portland
I make frag plugs and discs with my computer..........I just type in Boston Aqua Farms, pick out what I want, hit paypal, and they just send it to my door. No mess no fuss. At 23.00 per 100 I don't have any time in them or have to do all the freshwater changes while they cure a month. Some things are nice DIY, but the quality of the plugs is hard to replicate. Now decorative rock is a different story and we have done a workshop on this in the past. Tangafish, maybe you would be willing to host a meeting and make rocks. Like suggested you can drill holes in the rocks and make frag stations like are sold at the LFS.
very good ideas we need to do a work shop /meeting and make some of these and then we can use them at our fraggings we do with the club good job aarnoh thank you for the info
The problem with using cement is that you having to "cure" them in water for several weeks to keep them from spiking the pH of your tank. Remember when we made the rocks? Normans method of buying them seems much more practical.
thanks for the info guys. ok i kinda like the point and click thing myself. I just didn't know where to buy bulk plugs. I didn't realize they had to be cured. I dont have the time or the patience for that. Boston Aqua Farms here I come.
Not my words: To cure your new rock fill a container with tap water and completelysubmerge rock to soak. Change the water in your container at leasttwice a week. Use a PH test kit to verify that rocks are cured beforeadding to aquarium. After 5 weeks completely drain any water incontainer the rocks are curing in. measure the PH of your tap water andrecord it. Fill the container back up and let the rocks sit in stillstagnant water for one week. At the end of the week measure the PH ofthe water in your live rock container. If PH has risen at all repeatthis process each week until ph readings are the same.
that method is alittle off imo. to get a true ph of your tap water the bucket should be aerated for one night prior to the test to make sure all the co2 has dissapated out and the ph is at its true level. if you do a test straight out of the tap the co2 could be affecting the ph by a couple points depending on your municipaily and the test will show the ph higher after a week from teh inaccuracy of the tap test.
Mike Jenkins, Ljinks on the board, has come up with a very inexpensive way to make frag discs using very cheap bathroom cups, the little 3 oz. ones. When the "aragocrete" is set you just snip the rim of the cup with scissors and tear the cup away. As for plugs we haven't found a convenient way to cast the plugs. The problem is creating/locating a good mold. He has tried using some baby bottle nipples with varied success. He had located a silicon mold kit so we can make molds of pre-made plugs so we can cast our own. No new news on that though. As for the aragocrete mixture, the best starting place is 1 part portland cement to 4 parts sand, mix this together dry, then add water very slowly until it is a little thicker than cake batter. I generally use the aragonite sand as my aggregate sand. Oh and one more thing, if you are only curing a small batch of plugs put them in a small mesh bag of some sort and place them in the tank of your toilet. Automatic freshwater changes every time you use the bathroom (at least I hope you flush every time). BUT DO NOT DO THIS IF YOU HAVE EVER USED THOSE TOILET BOWL CLEANING TABLETS. God knows what's in there. Good luck
If you want to buy them This place is cheap: justcoral.com/index.php?cPath=35_41&osCsid=d90c495c9638c0c8c1b99d7d28b529c9
sorry blake.. i forgot to order the silicon kit , got busy chasing chemicals and then work sent me away from home again.. never got back to it.. you know me .. many projects at once as soon as i finish up the two major project i got goin ill get back on the plugs. i found as long as im doing discs in major bulk -500+ at a time its ok i havent run out yet from my first batch
