Coral buddies.

[+FluxCapacitor]

So, I'm still fairly new to this hobby and I've already run into 2 snags concerning which corals can hang out next to one another. Can we get a list of experiences from people of what corals are ok to put together and which are not. I can start off.

Lobo > Duncan

Richrodia Yuma > Acan Lord

The guys on the left killed the guys on the right. There's no major damage to my tank but those are the two coral fights I've seen already. As far as friends go:

Zoas, Yumas, and GSP are living together happily on one of my rocks.

Acans seem to get along fine with the Fungia plate.

The two torches I have occupy a close proximity on the same rock and don't attack eachother although I was warned that some frog spawns or hammers may attack torches.

Anyway, I'm aquascaping my bigger aquarium and want to plan out what corals can go where. This is going to be a mixed reef so I will need to make spaces for the aggressive corals to not be next to the more expensive non agressive ones. I hope to learn from you all's experience so post up your stories if you have them please.

[+FluxCapacitor]

65 views from people without coral in their aquariums or anything to add. Nobody has had coral kill another coral?

[FarmerTy]

I've had by my wild guesstimate, probably over 200+ different types of coral at one point or another over the last 12 years. It would take a month to write down all the interactions, which is why I haven't responded.

In general, I just don't let any touch if possible. Oh, and nothing beats a hydnophora.

[Sascha D.]

The proximity is different for every coral because they have different length sweepers. Some corals can touch. I've never had a problem putting acans next to acan or euphyllia next to euphyllia. Same with mushrooms/ricordea.

Its best practice to keep palys and zoas separated. Its also a good idea not to them to touch other species. Zoas like Mohawks can kill others.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

[Reburn]

Most sps don't like to touch. Like Ty has said no touching your neighbors or I'll cut your arms off.

Like said above most frogspawn, hammers, octospawn, torches can touch. Mostly same species, sometimes different species, sometimes they can touch forever, sometimes not at all.

Same with zoas, most palys can touch other palys but not zoas, most zoas can touch other zoas but not palys, so,etimes telling the difference is hard. Best not to let them touch at all.

It's too hard to make a list as many coral strains within the same species act differently.

Ty I'll put a space invaders pectina against a hydnophora . That peticular pectina is bad to the bone. I want one so bad but I'm not willing to give up the space it needs to not nuke everything around it.

[+BobcatReefer]

Same with zoas, most palys can touch other palys but not zoas, most zoas can touch other zoas but not palys, so,etimes telling the difference is hard. Best not to let them touch at all.

Well, crap. That means I need to move some of these guys, eh? I was hoping to turn that ledge into a zoa/paly garden.

[Reburn]

I let them touch until I see problems. It's not the best practice but it's fine. I would let them go and if close up where they are touching cut a fire break with a scalpel. They will regrow and you will have to do it again.

I know Rastas, oxides, bam bams, radioactive dragon eyes, blondes aka bbeb, and fruit loops place well together

[rprew]

A $5 frag will beat a $100 frag everytime

[FarmerTy]

Most sps don't like to touch. Like Ty has said no touching your neighbors or I'll cut your arms off.

Like said above most frogspawn, hammers, octospawn, torches can touch. Mostly same species, sometimes different species, sometimes they can touch forever, sometimes not at all.

Same with zoas, most palys can touch other palys but not zoas, most zoas can touch other zoas but not palys, so,etimes telling the difference is hard. Best not to let them touch at all.

It's too hard to make a list as many coral strains within the same species act differently.

Ty I'll put a space invaders pectina against a hydnophora . That peticular pectina is bad to the bone. I want one so bad but I'm not willing to give up the space it needs to not nuke everything around it.

I wish I still had my hydnophora. We can do alleyway coral fights and if the cops show, grab and run!

[Reburn]

A $5 frag will beat a $100 frag everytime

Truth

[Reburn]

Most sps don't like to touch. Like Ty has said no touching your neighbors or I'll cut your arms off.

Like said above most frogspawn, hammers, octospawn, torches can touch. Mostly same species, sometimes different species, sometimes they can touch forever, sometimes not at all.

Same with zoas, most palys can touch other palys but not zoas, most zoas can touch other zoas but not palys, so,etimes telling the difference is hard. Best not to let them touch at all.

It's too hard to make a list as many coral strains within the same species act differently.

Ty I'll put a space invaders pectina against a hydnophora . That peticular pectina is bad to the bone. I want one so bad but I'm not willing to give up the space it needs to not nuke everything around it.

I wish I still had my hydnophora. We can do alleyway coral fights and if the cops show, grab and run!

Next you know people will be trying to put lugols in the opponents bag. I don't know what happened to your coral it was fine a sec ago lol

[FarmerTy]

Or roiding your corals up with acropower before the fight! He tested positive for aspartic acid!

[+BobcatReefer]

Any reason proximity would matter - not touching, just close? Compare the pic above to this one taken today (vs 5 or 6 days ago, above). The zoa colony has been progressively closing up and today has zero heads out. I did not consider proximity as an issue, because the progression of closing started from the far side. They do not touch.

[Reburn]

Proximity usually doesn't matter.

In my experience Green Bay packers don't like a ton of light. I would pull them, do a chemiclean dip and reinstall lower.

[Sascha D.]

I don't believe you should keep those corals together because the palys will shadow the zoas and take over. It might take a year or two, but my money is on those big polyps. Polyp rocks are pretty cool, but you'll have the best success with zoas on one rock and palys on a separate rock.

Also, palythoa > SPS. If the palys grow up to the base then they will sting the devil out of the SPS. Once the skeleton is showing the polyps will start to grow up the base. It's happen to me and I've seen it happen to others on ARC.

[FarmerTy]

I don't believe you should keep those corals together because the palys will shadow the zoas and take over. It might take a year or two, but my money is on those big polyps. Polyp rocks are pretty cool, but you'll have the best success with zoas on one rock and palys on a separate rock.

Also, palythoa > SPS. If the palys grow up to the base then they will sting the devil out of the SPS. Once the skeleton is showing the polyps will start to grow up the base. It's happen to me and I've seen it happen to others on ARC.

Good advice here. I tried to make a pretty zoa/paly garden once and my palys just overshadowed and shaded out all my zoas. Not the look I was going for.

[+BobcatReefer]

do a chemiclean dip

Why Chemiclean? And would iodine (which I have on hand) work?

[Reburn]

Zoas can sometime get something I call zoa wilt. I don't know what the proper name is however it's a bacterial infection similar to zoa pox with out the spots. The zoas will sometimes start to close up and die starting at the edges and moving to the center. Since chemiclean is a modified mycin group of antibiotics it helps as a first line of defense against the many bacterial things that seem to go on with zoas. It's very gentle so there really isn't any reason to not do it prophylacticly.

No I wouldn't use iodine.

[+BobcatReefer]

Gotcha. I popped it off that ledge and have it in the sandbed. I'll see if it opens up in the next 24hrs.

[+FluxCapacitor]

This is good, I was hoping this was the discussion we'd end up having here. I have some pink plasma zoas that have very large heads/polyps on them and I'm now starting to think they may be paly's. Is there any way to know, are the zoas generally smaller and palys generally larger?

I have two pectinia's now. They seem to be pretty rare corals online. I dunno if it's because they're hard to find or because they're hard to keep..... or both. The smaller of my two only shows two tentacles sometimes that are about an inch and a half long.... the other is still new. I am guessing they can take out other corals if the conditions are right but I haven't seen them attack or get attacked yet.

[Reburn]

It's all kinda a crap shoot and best guess. Lash length, polyp size, stalk length, mouth design. Lash length and stalk length are very variable due to flow and lighting.

Pectinas just aren't popular right now. Add the fact that some of them can wipe out everything in a cube foot it just doesn't pay to dedicate the space to them.

Same with war corals.

[+FluxCapacitor]

Wow, I didn't know pectinias could be so crazy like that. All the pictures I've seen of them just look like horned plates, never seen any tentacles except the two small ones mine puts out sometimes. My rainbow pectinia is only like 1.5" across and the snow tip pectinia is like 2.5" across.

[Timfish]

As a general rule I hate rules of thumb ( ) but I try not to let any single species account for more than 10% or 15% of the biomass in a tank. I've seen situations that seems like corals down stream from a really large colony are being stunted, moving one or the other results in the slow growing colony growing faster. This can happen with colonies of the same species as well as different species. Sinularia species for example produce diterpenes with cytotoxic properties and are being studied for potential cancer treatments.

[+FluxCapacitor]

Timfish, can you explain that a bit more? I'm sorry I didn't quite understand what you meant by 15% biomass.

[Timfish]

Sorry! "Biomass" is the combined mass of "everything" living in a given space, area or volume. I should have clarified my comment to "coral biomass". With corals there is a pretty big fudge factor as their volume can change a lot and I've found I instinctively compare them deflated. With stoney corals a significant amount of their "closed" volume can be skeleton and there could be debate about whether or not to include that as part of a their biomass.