Quick SPS Aggression Question...

[Cahooligan]

i have a real quick question. ive only ever kept LPS and softies before, so excuse my lack of knowledge... but ive looked at soo many amazing SPS systems, and ive seen all of them placed so close together. how are they able to get along without bothering eachother? with LPS you have to watch out for sweepers, and with softies, its their toxins, but why are SPS able to grow so close together? i know the majority of them were bought as frags, and grown together. i also know that they are trimmed to prevent one over-growing another, but are they aggressive towards one another? or is it simply because the majority of them are acropora sp.? (similar to how you are able to place euphyllia sp.near eachother in the LPS world.)...thank you for taking time to answer my little question

 

[iceh]

i have a real quick question. ive only ever kept LPS and softies before, so excuse my lack of knowledge... but ive looked at soo many amazing SPS systems, and ive seen all of them placed so close together. how are they able to get along without bothering eachother? with LPS you have to watch out for sweepers, and with softies, its their toxins, but why are SPS able to grow so close together? i know the majority of them were bought as frags, and grown together. i also know that they are trimmed to prevent one over-growing another, but are they aggressive towards one another? or is it simply because the majority of them are acropora sp.? (similar to how you are able to place euphyllia sp.near eachother in the LPS world.)...thank you for taking time to answer my little question

Like you said, I think it depends on the species.

 

[ousnakebyte]

To answer your question, yes, sps are indeed aggressive toward one another. Almost everyone here has probably had an unsecured frag roll over or drop onto another sps colony and get "burned" (loss of tissue due to aggression). When talking acroporids, you can keep them growing so closely together b/c they don't seem to extend their polyps out that far when compared to the various "LPS" corals. But, if they do start to encroach upon one another, then a battle will ensue. This is why you see the constant trimming back, akin to gardening.

In general (and there are always exceptions), LPS corals tend to grow much more slowly and have evolved various mechanisms to claim real estate on the reef - sweeper tentacles, extruding mesenteric filaments for example. They tend to rely less on asexual reproduction and more heavily on sexual reproduction to propagate (yes, I know LPS can asexually propagate). They sheer number of eggs produced by some Faviids is astonishing.

Branching "sps" corals, like Acroporids, can definitely still sexually reproduce - and it is an amazing sight - but they seem to primarily reproduce through asexual fragmentation (breakage), putting a lot of energy into a fast growing lifestyle rather than sweeping across a reef or throwing up on a neighbor.

As I said, there are always exceptions, and I have seen P. damicornis (a common "sps" coral), sweep out its tentacles quite far (for such a small polyp) to claim real estate, but when you compare this against something like Galaxia, there really is no contest.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Mike

 

[Cahooligan]

Okay thank you very much.