Placement help

codygarner08

codygarner08

New member
I'm trying to figure out where I should place my new favia corals, right now they are on my sand bed, but I want to place them on my rock once they get accustomed to my tank. I have attached a few pictures, any advice will help. Thank you.

The new additions are the two 3/4 frags. It's the first picture.


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Specifics of where to put corals are up to you. General points of advice:

1. LPS should be put in the bottom part of the rock work if you plan to keep sps. This way, you can have the intense lighting and flow you need for sps at the top of the rock. It is my experience lps generally don't like a ton of flow.

2. Related to 1, low-moderate flow and moderate lighting. Depending on the lighting you have, moderate lighting could mean top of the tank. However, if you have 5W LEDs in reasonable abundance, probably towards the bottom of the tank. Regarding flow, if you can see feeding tentacles on your coral at all (might not be possible on Favia) they should be "billowing" not slicked out flat in the flow. I.e., they should be gently waving around, out in front of the disc, not all to one side.

3. LPS can have, and Favia does have, stinging sweepers. I would leave 3-4 inches at least to the nearest coral.

4. Run carbon, and change it regularly. Softies wage their coral wars chemically, and those chemicals can make your stony corals unhappy. Purigen, in my experience, is not as effective as carbon in this role. Plus, you don't have any tangs (tank looks too small) so you don't need to worry so much about fine particulate from carbon (although running it before some sort of mechanical media is always a good idea).
 
FishAndPhysics said:
4. Run carbon, and change it regularly. Softies wage their coral wars chemically, and those chemicals can make your stony corals unhappy. Purigen, in my experience, is not as effective as carbon in this role. Plus, you don't have any tangs (tank looks too small) so you don't need to worry so much about fine particulate from carbon (although running it before some sort of mechanical media is always a good idea).
Click to expand...


I'm 16 months into the hobby so are definitely a noob but I am already strongly leaning to the "˜less is more' approach. I've seen a lot of discussion about carbon and one school of thought is only run it when you feel you have a problem.

I haven't run it in my 65g tank since I started it, except when I had an issue due to over-enthusiastic LC dosing that killed a Torch and badly affected a Sinularia. I ran carbon immediately I identified the problem as I was concerned about the toxins being released. I changed it after a week. Once I was happy I rectified the problem and the animals were more healthy I removed it.

What are your thoughts about 24x7 vs targeted use of carbon?
Apart from my issue above, what issues would you feel carbon is particularly important in helping manage?


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I would say carbon is definitely insurance. In your case, if your sinulara had been in a little bit worse shape, or if you had happened to be on vacation when things went bad, you may not have been so lucky. Plus, I have a feeling that if traumatic damage to soft corals releases lethal levels of toxins to stonies and fish, they are probably releasing some level of toxin at all times. I worry about retarded growth and long term effects. You have to remember the density of coral mass per volume of water we keep in our tanks is unnatural by orders of magnitude. You have to take some precautions to make up for this proximity. Conversely, I haven't seen any evidence of any issues with running carbon, except for the aforementioned issue with tangs and HLLE, and you shouldn't keep tangs in a 65g anyway, so not an issue. I suppose the only possible problem is that it makes the water too clean, especially when combined with aggressive skimming (which may also help with soft coral toxins) but there are products to help with that if you're concerned (reef energy, for example).
 
I agree with fishandphysics, I would place them low, you have a great spots on the bottom rock on the left of your tank, where the clowns seem to like to hang out. Right where the live rock lips, I wouldn’t glue them down and just put them there and see how they like it before you make a permanent home for them. And I also use carbon 24/7 and all 3 of my tanks though at one time I didn’t use carbon for a bit on one of my tanks and it wasn’t as great as my other two (stability, cleanliness, reassurance) what more do you need?
 
FishAndPhysics said:
I would say carbon is definitely insurance. In your case, if your sinulara had been in a little bit worse shape, or if you had happened to be on vacation when things went bad, you may not have been so lucky. Plus, I have a feeling that if traumatic damage to soft corals releases lethal levels of toxins to stonies and fish, they are probably releasing some level of toxin at all times. I worry about retarded growth and long term effects. You have to remember the density of coral mass per volume of water we keep in our tanks is unnatural by orders of magnitude. You have to take some precautions to make up for this proximity. Conversely, I haven't seen any evidence of any issues with running carbon, except for the aforementioned issue with tangs and HLLE, and you shouldn't keep tangs in a 65g anyway, so not an issue. I suppose the only possible problem is that it makes the water too clean, especially when combined with aggressive skimming (which may also help with soft coral toxins) but there are products to help with that if you're concerned (reef energy, for example).
Click to expand...



Thanks for the reply and your thoughts, much appreciated.


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Cody - On the subject of where to locate the Favias, the above advice is correct - they don't need really intense lighting, and you want flow, but not sand-blasting flow.

Looking at your tank pics, you've a couple of LPS that will expand greatly during the night. Specifically the Duncan and the Torch. These have the potential to sting corals around them, so you'll want to assess how much room to give them with a flashlight a couple of hours after lights-out.

Another comment about flow. I'm guessing from the scale of your photos that this is a 20 or 30 gallon tank. It looks like this is an AIO Innovative Marine with a return and a spin stream aqua gadget. Based on the corals that you have, I'd say you're good for the moment, but down the road you might consider adding an additional propeller pump that's controllable to the bottom left corner of the tank. A good choice that will grow with you when/if you set up a larger tank would be the Tunze controllable 6040. They're bulletproof and extremely small, so they are easy to hide behind rockwork. And since they're massively adjustable (from 50 gph to 1200 gph), it'll be easy to dial in enough flow to keep everyone happy without being forced to put it in an awkward place to avoid blasting your LPS with too much flow.
 
dkeller_nc said:
I can't really tell from the pictures, but it looks like vermetid snails.
Click to expand...



I just went in with some tweezers and crushed them all! I found a bunch on my ducon and trumpet, do you guys know how they reproduce? Also I crushed them up in the tank because some corals are glued down.



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Most think that vermetids are unsightly, and they can reproduce to plague proportions in some tanks, but they're not harmful to corals or other inhabitants in and of themselves. The house themselves in a calcareous tube that they build, and they feed by extending mucous nets to trap detritus, leftover fish food, and the occasionally unlucky copepod.

Unfortunately, there's really no magic bullet to get rid of them other than not introducing them in the first place.
 
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