pinning LR when corals are present.

Does anyone have any tips on pinning live rock with corals attached ? I work with rocks for a living and my stacking skills have worked so far. We'll until last night! Had a small collapse with no casualties or cracks.
I'm worried about purchasing a plastic that will be toxic.

 

Any kind of PVC pipe will work fine. You can also use an acrylic rod.

However, if you have good stacking skills and just get one piece of rock that's a little wobbly, it's amazing how well a little dab of something like this will help lock it in place.

HoldFast Epoxy Stick

I does stay white, so I try to use it on the underside where it's not visible. Just a small 1" x 1" (sometimes smaller) chunk will help lock things in, but is still small enough that the rocks will come apart easily if needed. However, if you're doing overhangs, arches, etc. where things are really cantilevered, you may need to pin it. Others have drilled and used zip ties as well.

Good luck.

 

K+1;d8)

 

With the tank being 7ft long I'm looking to get the rock up off the bottom. even with the two return pipes and four power heads, I still have dead spots. I'd like to have four contact spots where the rock touches the aquarium and the rest stacked. One arch in the middle. I'm worried that the corals will be damaged if i take them out of the water for too long. I have sps lps mushrooms, zoos and a huge toad stool. Oh and a sun coral

 

In that case, I would get some WalMart totes and tranfer the rocks with corals to the totes with tank water. You can use a little powerhead from WalMart to circulate and a little heater to keep them warm. That way, you can stack, drill, pin, epoxy, etc. your base rock until you get what you want without worrying about time out of the tank. You can stack in the other rocks after everything is up off the aquarium bottom.

I use them all the time. Cheap and easy insurance.