Natural-Like Frag Rack Project

[nautical_nathaniel]

To start things off, I will go over why I wanted to do this project. You see, I am limited on the space I have for my reefing hobby and I also want to get in to collecting high-end zoas and other corals to eventually be able to sale them as frags. Prior to this project, I only had an IM Nuvo 20 aquarium and a few acrylic frag racks.

I didn't like how the frag racks on the sides of the aquariums would skew the growth of the zoas to the side closest to the light and I also didn't want to put the racks on the front of the aquarium. It occurred to me one day that I could put them in the middle of the tank on the sand but that wouldn't work for very long before my pistol shrimp would be using the frags for burrow decorations but I still didn't want to give up on the sand bed idea...

I figured that I could move some stuff around an open up a pretty good amount of space:

So I went ahead and ordered some materials and went to planning:

I got in some of the new Stax Rocks sold by Two Little Fishies sourced through Marco Rocks as well as some standard egg crat/light diffuser in black:

I laid out the rocks and went to figuring out how I wanted put everything together:

I didn't have a whole lot of tools on hand for this project so I went to Harbor Freight and spent $22 on a cheap variable speed rotary tool. I figured if I burnt the motor up working on this it would be better to be out of $22 rather than $80 with an actual dremel ;)

As I worked I quickly figured out that the tool tips that came with the rotary tool were not going to do much of anything to the rock so I had to go out and buy a set of actual Dremel cutting wheels. Dremel makes a diamond wheel that would have made this project much easier and quicker, but the wheel and the speed lock holder tip together were around $35 and I felt like I had already spent enough on something that may not work the way I needed it to:

 

[Crabs McJones]

Lookung good so far. Following along! :)

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

I laid out the rocks I wanted to use and traced around the eggcrate edges that would be in contact with the rock:

After a few minutes of precise cutting and grinding, I was eventually able to put the eggcrate pieces into the rock with a flush fit:

After I got all of my base pieces cut out, I did a test fit to make sure at least the base would fit under my current aquascape:

After I determined it would fit, I went ahead and started gluing everything together:

The finished rack holds 8 frag plugs right now but there's a little lip on one of the rocks that can be busted off so that it holds 9:

I'm quite pleased with the project overall, I kind of want to do bigger versions of these racks in a future display style frag tank that would look too good to leave in a basement or garage ;)

Here is the final product in the tank:

If you have any questions, let me know :) thanks for stopping by! :D

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Lookung good so far. Following along! :)

Thanks! :)

 

[richie6]

Any other updates on this?

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Any other updates on this?

It works great and makes a good spot for a pistol shrimp tunnel network haha

In all seriousness, this frag rack is super functional and I've gotten many great comments on it, but I may have gotten a bit overzealous with putting it in my already cramped tank, I think I may have to remove it since I am having some flow issues along the bottom of my tank. I also recently got a Randall's goby that has little to no space to sift sand at.

My next aquarium or frag tank will feature some of these natural racks once I get it going. I think having a place to naturally mount mother colonies and then place frags right next to them, so that lighting and flow would change very little, could be very beneficial in maintaining coloration and growth rates.