Many reef keepers, including myself, utilize frag tanks to house corals propagated from colonies in a main display tank or to park corals that can’t fit in the display (some of us are hoarders!). They can also be used to quarantine corals but this type of setup requires a separate system on top of the one used for a display.

An alternate route is to plumb a frag tank into the same system used for the display, a much cheaper and easier to maintain solution since no extra equipment such as a skimmer or calcium reactor are required. If you opt for this setup you should consider a few things to avoid issues with problematic algae. Yes, even if your display is algae free you can have algae outbreaks in a frag tank connected to the display. Keep in mind that MORE