Cut, Cut, Chop, Chop, Snip, Snip!

[npaden]

Eric,

I enjoyed your article and am curious on some of your viewpoints. As with all printed media it is difficult to truly grasp a persons true meaning as there is no intonation or inflection of a voice or gestures or facial expressions to help get the message across. Really I've focused on a short part of your overall article that you may or may not have intended to have any particular emphasis.

I've tried to set up my new tank with the vision of what it will look like in 2 or 3 years down the road. Most of my acropora and montipora are scattered with fairly well thought out placements with approximately 8 to 12 inches of spacing between them depending on the species and anticipated growth rates and formation. I do anticipate that in 2 or 3 years with good growth rates, I will be faced with the chop, chop, snip, snip as a result of these corals growing into each other or to the water level at the top of the tank.

I have a picture of a relatively young reef beginning to regrow in fiji that James Wiseman took that I use for my wallpaper on my computer and that is what I am trying to emulate. My problem is that I am confined to a glass box and that young reef is going to begin to fill the box. So far my growth rates seem to be doing great and I'm estimating that I'm disolving 2+ lbs of media out of my calcium reactor a month.

Okay, I'm sure that's background that you didn't need, but I typed it so I'm not going to delete it now! Now to the meat of my comments. I've always been a proponent of fragging large established coral colonies as beneficial to the reef and something that a responsible hobbyist should feel good about. In your column I felt that you were indicating that it might be irresponsible husbandry techniques to be fragging the corals as this will weaken them.

What else is wrong with the notion of "cutting it out?" Corals live on the edge, delicately balanced in most cases on a bare minimal energy budget from light and limited food availability. In aquariums, it is probably even more of an issue because of the limitations of a closed water volume and the amount of food availability. As corals reach a certain size or age, if the energy is available, they may reach reproductive maturity and spawn. It is, to this day, an exciting and applaudable event to have coral spawn in the tank. If, however, a coral is subjected to constant pruning, the energy needed to provide injury repair and reallocation of energy to growth may compromise the coral and it may never reproduce. In fact, with enough pruning, its growth may be significantly slowed, as well.

Furthermore, pruning corals results in tissue injury that compromises its integrity and can allow for the invasion of potentially deleterious microorganisms, perhaps even the dreaded "mystery pathogen." It is generally found that pruning and fragmentation is well tolerated in a healthy coral reef and coral reef aquarium, but the fact remains that it does pose some risk to both parent colony and produced fragment. Constant pruning also entails the constant introduction of hands into the aquarium, and thus increases risks of tank mishaps and the introduction of contaminants, toxins, and non-native microbial flora. Such non-native flora has a long history of producing problems in coral reefs, and the implications within a closed system are even more likely to be problematic.

I would propose that it would be somewhat selfish to intentionally not frag your fast growing acroporas and montiporas if the end result is just to be applauded for having your corals spawn in your tank. I also think that if corals grow together you are going to see them expending far more energy reserves fighting with each other with the possible outcome of losing one or the other or both of the corals vs. just pruning them.

I'm not sure if I'm missing the message you were trying to get across or not. After all this rambling, I'm not even sure I know what I'm asking!

Just would like to get some more input on this from your perspective.

Thanks, Nathan

 

[EricHugo]

Hi Nathan:

Good comments.

No, I don't think it is at all irresponsible husbandry to trim corals. My point in the article was the amount of uneceesary cutting, trimming, and removing that is done.

One of the things that aquarists, in general, tend to try and replicate is coral bonsai. It doesn't work. You cannot keep a coral small. You can try, by constant trimming, but eventaully the coral will suffer. The exact reasons intheory are too long to go into, involving skeletal infilling, senescence, etc. But if a coral compromises the health of others and the tank, in general, I think it wise to do some manipulation. But, corals growing into each other and competing are not generally a problem..and I say this mainly in terms of stony corals. With soft corals and zoanthids, these are a danger in their competitive abilites in terms of both overgrowth and chemical toxicity. Futhermore, when these die, there isn;t much to remove. With stony corals, though, the comeptition is an energy drain, you are correct. However, so is the repair of tissue injury, and I think the literature supports that the latter is a higher energy drain. Corals fragemented take a full season or more to reproduce again unless they are are really large fragments that result. Corals in competition will reproduce seasonally unless the amount of competition is unusually large or detrimental. On the reef, part of the complexity and beauty results from these set-backs and regrowth periods. Some of the most interesting and natural tanks I have seen also have these interactions occurring. To be sure, a bit of balance and prudence is required.

In the long run, though, and depending again on what the goals of the aquarist are, I think it is better for the corals, better for the tank, and aesthetically more pleasing to not constantly removing growth or death. It makes the reef mature.

From a purely aesthetic view, live rock in general is either obviously dead large branches or holey, lumpy masses of coralline algae covred limestone. Some of my most interesting formations are from corals that have died - large branching vertical spires of old coral growth now covered with reef growth. It increases the spatial complexity, provides more habitat, and looks more natural tht just lumps of rock. Many of these places are also where old dead coral growth has cemented rocks together.

From a more practical side, and hopefully being aware of the soup of microbes present in the tank and on every surface, would you expose a newly cut hand to your sand bed, coral surface or water in general? You have an extremely good immune system, too. Now, make a fresh cut in a coral absolutely covered in Psuedomonas, Vibrio, etc. Yes, most corals heal well in a healthy tank, and yet it is pretty amazing that there are not more infections than there are. It is without quesion a significant risk. Also, many of the people having corals dying orsick in the tank, and perhaps slightly more prone to "cutting it out" may not be ones with exceptionally healthy tanks, you know?

So, I am not giving or even attempting to give, and rules or recommendations on thsi subject, but rather for the aquarist to begin thinking in terms of a holistic approach, to know what and how things happen on a reef, to perhaps make their tanks look and act a little more like a reef, and to just sort of offer some thoughts that seem to often not cross the average person's mind in husbandry issues. As I believe i stated in the article, the actual practice required will depend on the situation, and ultimately the goals or needs of the aquarist. I am trying to get people past the notion that corals are like fish...something to be disposed of or buried when they die.

 

[npaden]

Thanks for the lightning fast reply Eric!

I am not trying to emulate the frags on a curio shelf stacked so closely together that they can't grow bigger than 4 or 5 inches in diameter before pruning as many do. I actually am hoping that most will grow for a couple years (and 12" to 18" before needing to be fragged. I've always liked looking at Vernon's books to show what a colony really is as what we buy as colonies at the LFS are truly just very small frags to a true coral reef.

I guess it truly is a balancing act. I see Joe Kelly's tank pics and think that is aesthetically awesome, with several stags in the 18" size range but now he is having to prune significantly. I guess it would be hard to keep any stags in a tank for any length of time without pruning them or letting them die or grow along the top of the water level. I would be curious if someone were to do a poll of people fragging large established corals and what % of them experience loss or die off of the parent colony after exposing them to bacterial infections through fragging.

Oh well, more rambling.

Nathan

 

[pwlong]

Crowded Reeftanks

Crowded Reeftanks

Hi Eric,
I also read your article and felt it had some very good points and good info. I saw some aspects of myself in your article, ie hands always in the tank, moving things around. I did just recently have to do major surgery on my hammer due to damage from another corals sting. I cut the affected area away and the coral is now recovering nicely. That brings up a question. When I see pics of other reeftanks, some "Tanks of the Month", they seem so crowded that I cannot understand how the corals survive. Do you see this as a mistreatment of our animals due to crowding as many corals as possible with the result being damage due to competition?
Phil

 

[EricHugo]

I'm a big fan of a crowded tank if done thoughtfully and with fewer species, much less of a fan of crowded tanks that are chocked full of corals all less than a year or two old with everything in the ocean thrown in because it looked pretty.

Aquariums are like big cities...get enough people together in crowded enough conditions and you're gonna get some edgy people and some fights going on.

The problem with corals is that they look so pretty and peaceful. They are horrible creatures....designed with but few purposes...kill and eat. That's what they do, and they use some really horrible weapons....necrotic factors, posioned darts and spears, mucus netting, toxic chemicals...and they exist to catch, envelop, poison and digest anything that they can wrap their many arms around...and if that isn't enough, they hate each other and go to extraordinary lengths to keep everyone else around them at bay.

Now, the reason that you can see some packed out reefs in the wild is because there is a lot of physical space and water volume. If you took a patch of reef with an area equal to, say, a 180 gallon reef tank, you'll see one coral...maybe two...maybe not even a whole one part a part of one cause it is bigger than your living room. You will never see anything remotely resembling 68 separate species sitting together on a square meter of bottom. And that's with all the dilution of the ocean, predators, etc. involved. Why do we think it should happen in tanks? With each new addition comes new potentials for problems.

As I say so often in my forum, it comes down to risk assessment. How much risk do you want to take? How much do you know about these animals to assess that risk? For example, do you really want to grow a large Sinularia with your Euphyllia? Galaxea anywhere near anything else? Some additions and combinations may have relatively little risk, others I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole...and then you throw in the way people will keep, for example, reef crest corals with deepwater species in a brightly lit tank with low water flow. Is this stressful to one, to all, to the more potentially dangerous one?

Almost anything is possible...I think we have all seen tanks where it has been done, and heard the everpresent person pipe up proudly, "But I do it, and it's fine." I say, let everyone do what they want if they want to, but chances are good I'll see those same folks soon enough in my forum asking what went wrong ;-)

I won't delve into the aspects of what construes mistreatment...Its ethically hard to categorize mistreatment of animals that have only a nerve net, but its very easy to categorize relative stupidity, and lack of respect for the reef and take a strong stand there! But, I know what you are saying. I don't know. I don't know that normal competition means mistreatment, or if artificially crowding miniature corals means mistreatment. I think it will ultimately lead to problems for most....the same most who don't see it coming cause they haven't had a coral for five or ten years and see just what it can become - just ask someone like Larry Jackson! They don't call it the purple moster for nothing!!

I think the absolute best thing for most aquarists who haven't done so would be to visit a real reef. It makes so many things very clear even with one visit.