Transplanting Green Star Polyps

[rangermonroe]

Over the past year, I have had a GSP colony (that Ibought from this site) go absolutely crazy with growth.
It has covered three rocks and I have transplanted two other colonies.
It grew up the back glass until it reached the surface...

 

[rangermonroe]

and grew behind the over flow box...

 

[rangermonroe]

Well, As you can see, they were not going to do very wll there.
So I carefully sraped the mat from the glass...
*note how the whole colony retracted
This is the underside of the mat

 

[rangermonroe]

...Then I reattached it to a piece of base rock that I don't mind "losing" to the LFS store as a trade.
In about 2 weeks, the mat will be completely reattached and ready for trading.
This "opffspring" is larger than what I originally bought.

 

[clarkiiboi]

Yeah, thats a good size. Care to share how you carefully scraped it off the glass? Have you ever did this from the rocks, or did you let it grow over and cut between the two? Wont the rubber bands hurt the GSP's (in that area)? Is that all you used to attach it? Many questions, sorry for that, but I never had to do it yet and curious.....

 

[rangermonroe]

I used a glass scraper and carefully lifted the edges of the mat.
The mat isn't attached to the glass like coraline algae is, so it comes loose quite easily.
they don't seem to be affected by the rubber band.
I have done this before, and the biggest challenge is to get them to stay put long enough to reattach.
Also, I believe that the mat from which they grow is almost like fat. They seem to draw nutrients from it for growth. Really small peices of the mat which have broken off don't do as well as larger ones, and have very slow growth.

 

[darknes]

To remove gsp's from a rock, just take a razor, and cut a chunk out; it pulls right off from the rock.
To attach them, I use superglue. I just dab the underside of the mat dry, and add a few drops of superglue, and stick it to a rock. They'll attach in no time, and actually stick, unlike mushrooms.