When selecting corals...

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BigTruck6o2

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Dec 15, 2004
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85
Location
Illinois
When picking out corals, should you keep one kind in your tank as in should i just have LPS corals, or can you mix them both. is there any advantage of one over the other. TIA
 
You can mix some corals. It is mostly important to know the corals you need to give space to. Ideally, you should pick a region to replicate and stick with only corals and inverts found in it. This is not really followed too closely by many (myself included) though.
 
Soft corals can be kept with LPS corals provided you give everyone plenty of room to grow and spread. Most, if not all soft corals can release toxins and irritate neighboring corals and LPS corals have long sweeping tenticals that they can reach good distances to sting neighboring corals. SPS corals I've heard should be kept to themselves. I guess the advantages would be, soft corals tend to be quick growers and are much easier to propagate than LPS corals. I can't think of an advantage to LPS corals right now. lol They are beautiful though and add diversity to the tank. The fact that they grow slower and won't overtake your tank like some softies can could be an advantage. lol
 
alright, cause in all the picutres you see...theres corals one ontop of the other, i guess they are all ones that are safe to one another..
 
That tank is not "every species in the world". It looks to me like it is SPS dominated with a few lower light corals towards the bottom. Amazing SPS colonies in there. WOW.

I think the bulk of the TOTMs in ReefKeeping are SPS based tanks with few if any softies. If you want to have a lot of any one thing you should stick to a genre. If you mix and match your reef you'll need more room to keep the in-fighting to a minimum, run healthy amounts of carbon and do frequent water changes.

SPS species are more tolerant of mixing amongst their own, but there are some that will kill anything it comes in contact with. I have this little leather frag that touched a piece of hynophora microconus (known to be lethal, don't let it touch anything type of coral) and the leather killed off a small section of the hydno. I never would have expected that. I also had a kenya tree kill an entire cap on contact.

That said, I have a smattering in my main tank. I try to keep them in zones. Leathers over here, SPS over there, LPS down here. Seems to be working ok so far with the exception of the losses mentioned above.
 
Totall agree with Phyllis, I too like to keep zones in which to have my corals, the top part is mostly if not all SPS the middle and bottom of one side LPS and on the other side of the tank just a couple of softies that I am seriously considering taking out. I'd like to have several more LPS I love all the different species and shapes LPS have. I would consider, depending on the size of tank, to run several oz of very good quality carbon and change it on a weekly basis. I generally have 2 oz per 50G of system water this keeps my chemical warfare to a minimum.
HTH
 
Phyl, that was one example. Look at others as well. Almost seems like they were placed all together for pictures only. Check this one, AWESOME tank:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/totm/index.php

Second pic down from the top - on the left. there are SPS's with softies and LPS's in one big huddle.

As for my "every species in the world" comment well, it's just an expression. :)
 
I have asked the same question multiple times and the best answer I have recieved was that your better off providing adequate space between different species! Shrooms can be kept with shrooms, zoos with zoos, Candy cane with candy cane and so on ... But many times I have seen pictures of tanks with shrooms and zoo's piled on top of eachother and LPS next to softies and wonder how they get away with it!???
 
Its important to note these tanks are often very large 180gal or bigger. From a frontal view it might look like these corals are gowing on eachother or in contact but from a different perspective like from top down or from the side you can see how they all have their own unique cubby to grow in and often times they are trimmed so as to not come in to direct contact with eachother.

Known issues with SPS and softies. If you have many softies you will have issues with keeping SPS and the reverse.
 
Phyl, that was one example. Look at others as well. Almost seems like they were placed all together for pictures only. Check this one, AWESOME tank

That is also an SPS dominated tank with a few LPS towards the bottom. I don't see any leathers in there at all. I stand by what I said. People who are serious about keeping SPS (especially those TOTMs) are SPS dominated with few LPS at most. You generally won't see a leather. One guy I know won't even keep a leather in his prop system because it is plumbed into his main. He certainly doesn't want any zoos in his tank (they tend to take over a tank) and he's removed all but the most elusive of shrooms.
 
runway1 said:
Phyl, that was one example. Look at others as well. Almost seems like they were placed all together for pictures only. Check this one, AWESOME tank:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/totm/index.php

Second pic down from the top - on the left. there are SPS's with softies and LPS's in one big huddle.

As for my "every species in the world" comment well, it's just an expression. :)

another note.. Ive looked at the TOTM that you have the link to.. He does not have any softies in it.. SPS, LPS and some Anemones..
I think that they avoid softies in there systems to avoid chemical warfare issues with there SPS coarls that all the experanced reefers seem to love so much.. :p JK
 
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