Coral Wars

[JoeK99]

Recently I notices a few branches of my birds nest (Seriatopora hystrix) bleached. I wasn't overly concerned thinking a few branches weren't getting enough light or flow. Two days later the entire colony was gone. The suspected culprit..... a nearby monti (Montipora capricornis). Apparently they have been battling for a period of time and the monti won. The birds nest was grown from a 1/2" frag and was a beautiful pink specimen:sad1: Other battles I have encountered in the past:
Chalice vs Torch (Caulastria) Chalice won (sweeper tenticles)
Chalice vs Ricordea florida Chalice won
Frogspawn vs montipora Frogspawn won
Frogspawn vs blastomas Frogspawn
Anyone have any coral war experiences?

 

[Beandawg]

Hydnophora vs Blastos. Hydnophora sent out spaghettis and ATE half of a 80 head colony in 3 days.

 

[Sorry]

I haven't ventured into the coral keeping scene yet but i know i would be really upset to see beautiful coral killing each other. Isn't there ways to prevent that from happening? or is it just a natural occurrence

 

[jake koppen]

Just had either my frog spawn or xenia torch half of a nice colony of pocilipora. Sucks

 

[SushiGirl]

I haven't ventured into the coral keeping scene yet but i know i would be really upset to see beautiful coral killing each other. Isn't there ways to prevent that from happening? or is it just a natural occurrence

Keep them far enough apart.

Worst I've had in this softy tank is a red mushroom that took up residence next to a good-size colony of zoas. Zoas got tiny and a lot of them fled the frag rock. Also just moved a small frag of zoas away from a finger leather, they're actually opening up now LOL. That same finger leather and a large colony of palys are touching and no issues with either.

 

[JSeymour]

The fact that you lost the entire birdsnest colony concerns me. Although some Montis can be quite aggressive, they usually only cause localized damage. The entire colony dying makes me think alkalinity issues. Test your alkalinity before your display lights turn on and before your display lights go off. You want these numbers to vary less than 1 dKH. Testing will rule it out.

Your post did make me want to show a few different battles going on in my tanks, nothing too serious, but interesting none the less.

Here is Red Planet colony that I regularly have to kalk paste it's base as it tries to eat and grow over the unknown Acro growing next to it.

In this pic a tenius frag is growing over the Red Planet base. They aren't actually fighting, the tenius is just growing over it. There is a Pearlberry frag back there too, I'm curious to see what happens as all three bases meet up.

There are a few battles going down in this pic, most notably the Strawberry Patch Monti vs. a Multicolor Pocillopora(Pocillopora barely winning) and the Green Trumpet vs. Idaho Grape Undata(Trumpet wins hands down). The Pocillopora and Green Fork Birdsnest are also battling it out, but do not directly attack eachother.

This pic has several different battles going on, although none are serious.

Strawberry Patch vs. Flower Petal is the one I'm watching the most. They seem to be evenly matched, both attacking and killing. I'm curious to see if the whorls start mixing or possibly a pigment graft occurring. :fun4:

 

[rwb500]

great pics jason!!

 

[xris]

I had some chalices that were not very happy being close together. I ended up losing half of each.