Coral Growth

[JoshuA c]

How well do the following corals spread:
Mushrooms
Button polyps
Zoanthids
Pulsing Xenia
Hammer coral
Kenya tree coral

 

[carey]

They all grow and spread pretty well. i know the xenia will grow like weeds.
My zooa's have taken a few months to spread as well as my palythoas. My mushrooms are getting fuller but havent spread yet. My hammer hasnt spread either but it has gotten real bushy.

Hope that helps some

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Yupp all of those are fairly fast growing corals under the right conditions. A warning though, the xenia and kenya tree can take over a tank quickly. The xenia can be kept and isolated to one rock so it doesn't cover the rest but I wouldn't keep the kenya. They drop their arms when reproducing and they float and connect to a new rock, there is no way to keep it isolated.

 

[joy13]

I suggest of you don't have xenia don't get it. I got a used tank with just a little piece of it and I tried to kill it but instead it got the size of a soft ball in just a couple months and today while cleaning the glass with my magnafloat I noticed a piece has gotten on it and growing. Kenya trees can get out of hand too I got rid of mine. Button polyps are great if they are a nice color for some reason I got brown ones on rocks in every tank and never bought any and didn't see any on any rocks when I got them.

 

[JoshuA c]

I really like the pulsing xenia so I think I have to get some of that but I'll think about the Kenya tree coral a bit more

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Yah pulsing xenia is actually one of my favorite corals, I have some in three of my tanks. I have a very large rock covered with it in the front of our large tank and it looks awesome! I've had the kenya before too but returned it once it started dropping arms everywhere, it actually isn't too nice of a coral, kind of a dull brownish pink in color.

 

[JoshuA c]

Yah pulsing xenia is actually one of my favorite corals, I have some in three of my tanks. I have a very large rock covered with it in the front of our large tank and it looks awesome! I've had the kenya before too but returned it once it started dropping arms everywhere, it actually isn't too nice of a coral, kind of a dull brownish pink in color.

How long did it take to start dropping arms?

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Probably only a month or two, as soon as they were very happy they starting dropping like crazy. I had two that were slightly smaller than a baseball when extended. Once they started dropping arms I was removing about 7 pieces a day, even months after I returned them I kept finding the odd arm. I'd tear the arm off and a week later a new baby was growing in it's place, took me quite awhile to be rid of the stuff.

 

[JoshuA c]

How big was your piece to begin with?

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

mmm I think about a third of the size, the guy at the LFS gave it to me for free and it split into two right away, a piece fell off and attached to a shell I had in the tank. Thankfully it didn't attach to any of my large pieces of live rock.

 

[JoshuA c]

For free? Well that's pretty good deal

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Yah he's a really nice guy, wish he would have warned me about it being a weed though! It came from a tank that was literally full to the surface with kenya though so I should have known.

 

[JoshuA c]

Well you could always just trim it a bit every now and then

 

[0o.Kelsey.o0]

Yup if you are careful you can control it, you can take the arms that fall off and attach them to frag plugs and even bring them in to the LFS if you wanted. The arms are also pretty easy to tear off of the rock, if you don't get it all though more will grow back. Also be careful when trimming any, cutting the branches will release some slimy stuff into the water so I would always do a large water change after trimming any.

It is basically impossible to kill this coral so don't worry about harming it. I've even read about a guy who took it out of his tank and put it on his back deck during winter to see if it would die, it didn't.

 

[JoshuA c]

Well I guess why that's why it's still around...

 

[melosu58]

Moved to the SW General discussion. This forum is for profiles and descriptions of SW fish and corals.