Marble tiles for mother colonies of zoa?

[John1966]

I am starting to run a little frag farm to grow out and sell some zoanthids. I am thinking of using marble tile for the mother colonies and transferring the overgrowth to plugs as the tile fills out.

The reason is that live rock works great for growth, but it is sometimes hard to cleanly pull complete zoas off the rock without damage for fragging, due to uneven surface of the rocks. Large frag tiles even 3" square are too small for my plans. Regular plugs for the zoas tend to overgrow the whole plug eventually and stop growing as they run out of space.

I have some marble tiles (4" x6" ) that have no adhesive or anything but clean stone. I figure scraping polyps off with a razor blade would be a very easy and effective way to grow out the zoas for fragging to sell/trade.

Anyone else using marble tiles for this? Thoughts?

 

[Reeflix]

i have never used this, your idea is super cool!! but i would think it works. i dont see why not

 

[nuxx]

Don't see why not either...

Just ordered some Calacatta Gold tops for our house... hopefully your tiles were a little less expessive

 

[John1966]

Don't see why not either...

Just ordered some Calacatta Gold tops for our house... hopefully your tiles were a little less expessive

I had extra from a kitchen remodel last year. They were only $2.50 each (3"x6") from Home Depot. I don't need 100s of them (yet!).

 

[nuxx]

I had extra from a kitchen remodel last year. They were only $2.50 each (3"x6") from Home Depot. I don't need 100s of them (yet!).

Very nice!

The ones we're using for a backsplash are $60 a sqft, but they're super delicate and more than half a box are cracked (impossible to see when set) and were able to get Floor and Decor to sell us them for $27 a sqft.

Still stupid expensive, but our backsplash area is pretty small...

 

[footgal]

This is a great idea!! I used something like this except I made glass plates/tiles. I happen to be a glassblower so this was fairly simple and glass already exists in the tank so I knew it would be fine. The glass also allowed me to look at the under sides of the polyps which was a pretty unique/cool experience. Idk if marble will be broken down/release minerals into the water over time due to salt corrosion. Placing multiple frag tiles together should solve your space issue. Happy fragging!