Chalice Growth

[Jewel]

I'm sure this has been answered before but I can't find it, I've bought some really nice Chalice frags, I want them to spread out, How do I ensure they will grow out now that they are on a plug? Will they grow out flat once the plug is covered? Do I have to find a rock and burrow it out and put the plug into it?

 

[unibob]

From my experience chalice will encrust the plug, and then the rim growing past outside of plug will begin to curl down, this is when I remount onto a larger plug or disc.

 

[Jewel]

Do you remove it from the plug? or keep stacking them on top of each other?

 

[unibob]

I stack. As it's already encrusted to the first plug:

 

[Jewel]

Ok of course, but the original Frag is thick, then the surface of the plug gets encrusted, then the next surface and so on til the Chalice has a layered effect, Won't that look odd?

 

[unibob]

I find most grow slow enough that I'm not stacking very often. But yea I guess after a while it could look like a wedding cake with multiple layers .

 

[Darryl_V]

I have showed a few people my method of building up epoxy to the edges of the orginal cut frag.  This ensures the frag has a nice smooth transition to the first plug and actually increases growth rate IMO.  Than as Jerry said when it out grows one frag plug I mount it on a larger one and use epoxy on the transition again.

 

[AdInfinitum]

That's something I definitely need to try!

 

[curiousphil]

I did something like that with a sunset monti frag.... surrounded the frag disc with epoxy so that it could smoothly transition onto a rock.  Something I wonder about is why more people don't mount chalices onto a rock?  A chalice rock would look really cool.  I suppose it would have to be a relatively smooth rock though, and in the ideal placement...