Yeah, my previous post wasn't very clear.
It looks like you don't have a lot of corals in there. You can remove the corals from the rocks and then re-aquascape. Just leave in the display tank the nicest pieces of rock and make it at least half of the amount of rock you have right now, that way you get plenty of room for coral growth. The rest of the live rock put it in the sump. If some of the rocks don't fit in your sump just sell them. You can easily get $3-4 per lb of Live Rock.
We all put too much rock at the beginning because we just don't know better. Without a ton of rocks it looks "empty" but trust me, after a while you will appreciate having the room for the corals.
Also, with more space water flow won't be that much of an issue (you will need less power heads to move the water), and with more and better flow you will get less dead zones, less nuisance algae and overall better water quality. It will take you from 6 to 12 months to get decent size corals if you start with 1-2" frags. That is if you are keeping up with Calcium demand and feeding appropriately. So be patient.
Another thing to keep in mind is the placement of the corals. This is kind of tough at the beginning as you learn about different growth rates and patterns. But just to give you a couple of examples:
If you place an
Orange Monti cap high in the tank it will grow flat and shade everything underneath. You want to place it low so it grows up like in this image:
However, a slower growing
Blue Tortuosa, you might want to keep higher up. This is a good example of a piece placed on the top and sideways to get a more natural growth pattern.
You should use superglue gel (I use BSI IC-Gel available at hobby shops or online). It makes it very easy to attach corals to all kinds of places. You take the coral frag, remove it from the disk/cradle and put a bunch of Superglue at the base. Holding it carefully with your hands you press it against a crevice in the rock and wait about 10-15 seconds until the glue takes hold. Sometimes you might need to giggle it a bit for the glue to stick to the rock.
If you have a 1-2"
Green Bali Slimer and you glue it vertical it will grow up all the way to the top but it won't branch out as much. So it will be something like this image:
Now, if you place the same coral sideways on the rock it will grow out and up. I couldn't find a good example picture but I found this one that gives you an idea of how fast the
Green Bali Slimer grows compared to the
blue tortuosa behind it or even the
pink bird's nest to the right (which grows more compact):
You can get very creative. Mix it up a little. I have seen people that glue 3 different color
Montiporas to get some cool growth. Like this one:
Milliporas are pretty aggressive (so is the frogspawn you have in there) and will sting other corals in its proximity, so you want those away from a more delicate acropora. But many times several millis will coexist. You can see in this image how this
Millipora grows wider. If you place it too high up it won't allow any light underneath:
So keep in mind the growth patterns before you place corals.
Shaded areas are not that problematic though, sometimes you might want to keep some corals such as
sun corals or
Blue Chalices that do better under shade than direct light.
One advantage with the Superglue gel is that it is fairly easy to remove a frag that has been glued with it. So if a coral frag is not happy in whatever location (not enough light or flow, etc...) you can snap it out and place it elsewhere. Once the frag grows and encrusts itself in the rock you wont be able to remove it though, but you can cut a few branches.
If you have a large rock with a coral encrusted that you really like, like a
encrusting montipora,
you can take the whole rock out and chisel it. Better yet, you can drill a few small holes around the coral, to make sure that the piece of rock will break the way you want.
I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I have spent a lot of time looking at other setups. It is very interesting to see the way people that have been a long time in this hobby place the corals. So I try to replicate their success in my tank.
Good luck and keep us posted.
