Spacing for corals

[DREUTZ]

I have zoas, mushrooms, leathers, Duncan, acan, tractophylia, and just got a frogspawn in my 29g biocube. I know that corals will sting eachother but knowing the corals I have does anyone have suggestion of minimum distances to keep certain corals from eachother? Are some corals able to withstand stings from other corals? I know I should plan for future growth so I'm trying to map out a good grid for my frags.

Thanks in advance!

 

[mr_X]

like species can be right next to each other. acans duncans, and tracyphyllia cannot reach very far, so as long as you don't have them touching the next coral, you should be fine.
frogspawns have a pretty good reach. i've seen them reach 4" beyond their normal spread with stinging tentacles.
zoas aren't going to do much damage, and leathers can release toxins in the water column to kill neighboring corals they feel are encroaching on their territory.
i don't keep leathers so i don't know distances on those.

 

[dubs]

saltwaterfish.com have coral care guide as far as placing coral keep them or there are other websites i am sure other members will point u in the derection that they get there onfo from

 

[rookie07]

It is mostly common sense. Look at a coral, if it has tenticles that come out during the day, or at night, it needs more room than other corals, etc, etc....

Certain corals can co-mingle with other corals, ie mushrooms/zoanthids & Torch/frogspan/hammer...some corals can not be near each other(ie acan/chalice) without fighting

Some corals grow faster than others, thus they will need more room to grow, and they can block the lighting for other , slower growing corals
Some corals grow up(Torch, frogspawn, some SPS, etc.) which can block the lighting to other corals that grow on the rock, or build their own flat skeleton, below the coral that is "growing up"


Look at a coral you want to place somewhere, what are its habits(ie long sweeping tenticles), how will it grow(does it need rock to grow onto? Does it build its own skeleton? Will it grow "up" or grow flat? How fast will it grow?), what are it's requirements(Lighting/flow), what corals can it be around?

Figure all these things out, and you will know where and how to place your corals.


Obviously this does not included everything there is to know, but its a decent starting point for you.
I would suggest that you not glue/epoxy any corals anywhere until you learn the habits/requirements
Hope this helps

 

[Magic Reefer]

Also common sense, but corals from the same ocean areas do better together than from diff origin locales. ie: Aussie Acans will hang together better than India Acans

 

[SevTT]

I have zoas, mushrooms, leathers, Duncan, acan, tractophylia, and just got a frogspawn in my 29g biocube. I know that corals will sting eachother but knowing the corals I have does anyone have suggestion of minimum distances to keep certain corals from eachother? Are some corals able to withstand stings from other corals? I know I should plan for future growth so I'm trying to map out a good grid for my frags.

Thanks in advance!

Depends on the species. You can almost always put the same species together and they won't sting eachother, and you can often put the same genus together with the same result.

So you can still all your zoas together in one place, all your frogspawn and other Euphyllias together in another, etc. Acans grow really slow and don't take up much space, so you can put 'em pretty close to other things with the same habits, like zoas and such. You need to be more careful with things that can produce sweeper tentacles (like the frogspawn,) in that case, you'll want to make sure they can't reach other corals or corral them in somehow so that they can't easily come in contact.

To a certain extent you'll need to learn from experience -- see what happens when two corals do come into contact. I'd say that the most 'dangerous' corals in the tank, to other corals, are probably the leather and the frogspawn. Everything else is relatively tractable, though keep in mind that even if stinging isn't a problem, things overgrowing eachother can be.

 

[SevTT]

Also common sense, but corals from the same ocean areas do better together than from diff origin locales. ie: Aussie Acans will hang together better than India Acans

...Unless they're competitive species from the same area, in which case there's a virtually guaranteed war. %)

 

[Magic Reefer]

...Unless they're competitive species from the same area, in which case there's a virtually guaranteed war. %)

Yeah, my bad. Good catch there SevTT

 

[DREUTZ]

thanks for the advice everyone