I'm starting to fill out my aquascape with corals, and am agonizing about where to put things. I feel like whatever spot I pick is where a coral will be forever. But I guess that doesn't have to be the case. What do you do? Do you keep corals where you first put them? Or do you move them around as they grow and fill in, or if you have new ideas about placement. If you've ever watched someone doing a flower arrangement, they are constantly pulling flowers out and moving them around until they come up with something they like. Maybe reef tank aquascaping should work the same way?
Do you move your corals around?
- Thread starter Dave-T
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I would fine the place were the corals look the happiest and are thriving and let them fill in there. They all prefer different flow and light and will grow the best in a specific spot.
Personally, I place them where I think they will do the best based on the care requirements of the individual coral. If they do well, ill keep em there, if not I move them until they are happy. But I do move corals on occasion, especially if they are being attacked or encroaching on another coral.
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Don’t be afraid to move your corals, especially if they are not thriving in their current location. Once you find a good spot, they will quickly grow and you will eventually need to move or frag again. This torch has been moved/fragged multiple times in 2 1/2 years.
Alot is going to depend on your 'ideal' reef.
1) What size tank are you talking about...
2) Are you the kind of reefer that is going to keep clipping off branches of their corals to try to recoup some of the costs of the hobby.
3) Do you like large massive colonies...
4) Do you like a heavily grown in dense forest of corals...
5) Are you going to worry about every thing that touches or let nature takes it course...
1- If you have a 29 gallon tank and you have a dozen frags/corals they are going to quickly grow tell you what needs to be done with them. You have to know to some degree what kind of coral it is. Is it encrusting? It is plating? Is it bushy? Is it tabling? Is it a short stag? Is it a tall stag?
When you goto a frag swap or the store and buy your colored sticks you may get some BS fancy name, but doubtful you'll get an accurate name as to the type of coral and what shape it may grow into. When you do know such things then you learn to mount tall corals like stags at the back, bushies in the middle, tabling along the edges and plating at the front.
I'm currently stocking a fresh 750g tank. There are almost 300 corals in the tank. And placement was based up coral growth type, where it was known, and color where it wasn't. Now down the road some of these corals are going to be moved because we didn't know something was going to be a tall solid wall of stag was placed in the front of the tank and is going to block the view at the back. Or that a tabling was placed someplace where it's going to grow over and shade everything underneath.
So the size of your tank is the first determination of how to place them and if you are going to move them. If you have a 29g tank you aren't going to end up with a bunch of basketball sized colonies, you're going to have less pieces of corals, but you are going to be more critical of corals interacting with each other.
2 - Are you going to clip off every branch of growth you get to recoup your costs. If this is your method of reefing, and there is nothing wrong with it, this means your going to be more often cultivating your corals rather than growing your colonies. Being able to easily pull these corals from your tank to clip and then put them back where they were is a pretty smart move.
Corals for the most part can easily adjust to all the different depths in our aquariums. Once they get settled into the lighting intensity of an area they will color up and grown - Maybe they could be better in a different part of the tank or maybe they will be worse, or maybe it doesn't make a difference. What does make a difference is the flow. They corals grow based on the way the flow is hitting them. Even what appears to be random flow has patterns that it follows and the corals grow based on that patterns. Pulling a coral and moving it to the same level of lighting but opposite flow pattern can have a huge impact on the health of a coral. Changing how the water moves through a mature colony can cause them to not get enough flow in certain areas and this causes tissue necrosis. This changing the type of flow is one of the biggest reasons that large fresh acro colonies do not do well transitioning to captivity.
3 - Do you like large massive colonies? - If you like several show piece colonies - then your going to be less likely to touch those colonies, and move the colonies that are around your show pieces to not get in the way of their growth and development. Everytime corals meet one usually tries to kick the butt of the other - And this leads to point 4 - dense forest of growth. If large massive colonies are your goal, then anything that hinders their growth or health you are going to want to remove. At the same time as colonies get large and massive - they naturally hinder the growth and health of the corals trying to develop below them (for lighting) or behind them (from flow). These corals you are not going to move, your going to leave them alone and let them grow.
4- the dense forest of corals - If you like all the tightly packs branches of different colors and different shapes, then you are not going to be moving your corals around. Your going to let them natuarally grown into each other - Battle as they may - and let them figure things out on their own. In this case you're not going to move anything around but let mother nature and natural selection move, shape, and guide the growth of the corals.
And then topic 4 becomes topic 5 - Let mother nature sort them out. By the time the corals grow enough to start affecting each other they have started to develop some of their colony type. Moving a coral every time it come near another another coral could cause more damage than letting the corals sort it out. Two corals may grow right up to each other and then stop, one may grow over the top of another, one may sting and kill and over grow another, and they might live happily ever after side by side. When dealing with SPS corals there are very few set guidelines as to how warfare is going to turn out. But the damage you may cause by removing and relocating might be worse and more detrimental than the way in which nature resolves these issues.
Dave B
1) What size tank are you talking about...
2) Are you the kind of reefer that is going to keep clipping off branches of their corals to try to recoup some of the costs of the hobby.
3) Do you like large massive colonies...
4) Do you like a heavily grown in dense forest of corals...
5) Are you going to worry about every thing that touches or let nature takes it course...
1- If you have a 29 gallon tank and you have a dozen frags/corals they are going to quickly grow tell you what needs to be done with them. You have to know to some degree what kind of coral it is. Is it encrusting? It is plating? Is it bushy? Is it tabling? Is it a short stag? Is it a tall stag?
When you goto a frag swap or the store and buy your colored sticks you may get some BS fancy name, but doubtful you'll get an accurate name as to the type of coral and what shape it may grow into. When you do know such things then you learn to mount tall corals like stags at the back, bushies in the middle, tabling along the edges and plating at the front.
I'm currently stocking a fresh 750g tank. There are almost 300 corals in the tank. And placement was based up coral growth type, where it was known, and color where it wasn't. Now down the road some of these corals are going to be moved because we didn't know something was going to be a tall solid wall of stag was placed in the front of the tank and is going to block the view at the back. Or that a tabling was placed someplace where it's going to grow over and shade everything underneath.
So the size of your tank is the first determination of how to place them and if you are going to move them. If you have a 29g tank you aren't going to end up with a bunch of basketball sized colonies, you're going to have less pieces of corals, but you are going to be more critical of corals interacting with each other.
2 - Are you going to clip off every branch of growth you get to recoup your costs. If this is your method of reefing, and there is nothing wrong with it, this means your going to be more often cultivating your corals rather than growing your colonies. Being able to easily pull these corals from your tank to clip and then put them back where they were is a pretty smart move.
Corals for the most part can easily adjust to all the different depths in our aquariums. Once they get settled into the lighting intensity of an area they will color up and grown - Maybe they could be better in a different part of the tank or maybe they will be worse, or maybe it doesn't make a difference. What does make a difference is the flow. They corals grow based on the way the flow is hitting them. Even what appears to be random flow has patterns that it follows and the corals grow based on that patterns. Pulling a coral and moving it to the same level of lighting but opposite flow pattern can have a huge impact on the health of a coral. Changing how the water moves through a mature colony can cause them to not get enough flow in certain areas and this causes tissue necrosis. This changing the type of flow is one of the biggest reasons that large fresh acro colonies do not do well transitioning to captivity.
3 - Do you like large massive colonies? - If you like several show piece colonies - then your going to be less likely to touch those colonies, and move the colonies that are around your show pieces to not get in the way of their growth and development. Everytime corals meet one usually tries to kick the butt of the other - And this leads to point 4 - dense forest of growth. If large massive colonies are your goal, then anything that hinders their growth or health you are going to want to remove. At the same time as colonies get large and massive - they naturally hinder the growth and health of the corals trying to develop below them (for lighting) or behind them (from flow). These corals you are not going to move, your going to leave them alone and let them grow.
4- the dense forest of corals - If you like all the tightly packs branches of different colors and different shapes, then you are not going to be moving your corals around. Your going to let them natuarally grown into each other - Battle as they may - and let them figure things out on their own. In this case you're not going to move anything around but let mother nature and natural selection move, shape, and guide the growth of the corals.
And then topic 4 becomes topic 5 - Let mother nature sort them out. By the time the corals grow enough to start affecting each other they have started to develop some of their colony type. Moving a coral every time it come near another another coral could cause more damage than letting the corals sort it out. Two corals may grow right up to each other and then stop, one may grow over the top of another, one may sting and kill and over grow another, and they might live happily ever after side by side. When dealing with SPS corals there are very few set guidelines as to how warfare is going to turn out. But the damage you may cause by removing and relocating might be worse and more detrimental than the way in which nature resolves these issues.
Dave B
Great reply!
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