[Coral-List] Best Non-Toxic Marine Epoxy?

[sjk012]

Hi Hannah,


While z-spar has a great deal of chemical additives, it has not proven to be toxic to corals in our experience, in fact our corals have grown over the top of the epoxy after several months.


The organization I work for has done a great deal of coral restoration in The Bahamas over the last 7 years or so. During this time we have used the portland cement/plaster mixture, Z-spar, and All-fix epoxy. Coral restoration foundation recommended all-fix epoxy to us as a cost-effective alternative to Z-spar. All three have worked great and several species of coral (mainly a. palmata, a. cervicornis, and d. cylindrus) have easily grown over all epoxies. We prefer z-spar and all-fix epoxies because it much easier to use and more portable than the cement mixture. Choosing between z-spar and all fix is up to you. All-fix has the disadvantage that both parts of the two-part epoxy are the same color (white) so knowing that you have an exact 50:50 ratio is more challenging. The disadvantage to z-spar is of course the cost and it easily stains all fabrics.


Hope this helps,

Stacy

________________________________
From: Hannah Aichelman <hannahaichelman at gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, March 10, 2015 12:22 PM
To: coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
Subject: [Coral-List] Best Non-Toxic Marine Epoxy?

Hi Coral List,

We are trying to find the best non-toxic marine epoxy that will be used to
seal core plugs from recently drilled coral colonies (Siderastrea siderea
and Pseudodiploria strigosa). Any ideas for the best options? We are trying
not to use Z-SPAR because of potential toxicity to the coral.

Thanks!

Hannah