badonkadonk
Member
I acquired a neon green Devil's Hand Leather Coral (Lobophytum sp.) over 10 years ago as a small frag (from Reefer Madness near Los Angeles when they used to sell 20 fresh cut frags for a hundred bucks or something like that) which grew to a good size over the years. Probably 8" wide by 6" tall in a total system volume of around 250 gallons. It was a beautiful coral - it glowed like a psychedelic lighthouse under actinics. But I've had "issues" with SPS and nutrients for at least the last 5 years. I tried everything from GFO to carbon dosing including liquids and biopellets, a sulfur reactor, oversize skimmer, running carbon, refugia, nitrate adsorbers, zeolites, replacing rock gradually, went from deep sand bed to no sand bed to shallow sand bed etc. etc. This was over a period of 5 to 7 years so I was doing things gradually and one thing at a time, but my SPS just never thrived and new frags would die more often than survive. I'd been suspicious of alleopathy from the leather coral, but I'd never read anything really definitively damning about it, and some people seem to grow SPS and leathers just fine. But I finally got around to removing it a couple of months ago and almost instantly (literally within 2 days) things started looking better. I've had a big problem with lobophora (the reddish brown plating algae that really doesn't look like an algae) during this time, and by day 3 or so the stuff started flaking off the rocks, leaving a pristine white rock behind. Now proper coralline is growing in its place. SPS started waving their polyps like I'd never seen before. And mushrooms started shriveling up too - I'd had a problem of too many mushrooms, to the point I wished I'd never put them in my tank. Though I did have a casualty of a 6" maxima clam that I'd had for about 6 years. So long story short, be careful with those leather corals, IME if you run a mixed reef with SPS avoid them, or remove them if you've got them if things aren't looking great. Perhaps smaller ones are ok; I didn't notice the problems until mine got to be over probably 3 or 4 inches wide. ymmv
