400 gallon project

[Trigger Man]

I wonder why this does not happen in the ocean. I was wondering the same thing as I notice that my bases of many of my corals don't seem very thick, and I figure this may be caused by my dosing which causes the coral to grow quickly and more slender, where as without dosing maybe the coral would have grown slower but thicker. So do you dose your tank (i don't remember)?

Originally Posted by untamed

The tank is approaching two years old now. It seems to have an entirely new set of challenges now.

Some of the faster growing coral heads are simply collapsing under their own weight. Well...Freckles (aka "the submarine") might give them a gentle nudge. But they inevitably snap off right at their tiny base.

Here's today's frag!


As the coral gets really large, the inner/lower areas don't get any light and tend to die off. As a result the coral just adds weight to it's top and never reinforces the bottom. It would seem that a healthy dose of constant trimming is the ticket to longer term, sustainable, large coral heads. (at least with faster growing types)

[untamed]

I suppose in the wild this might just collapse on itself and spread/grow over again. Between storms and waves I would expect that wild coral never gets this far extended.

I don't generally dose anything to my tank that would cause unusually fast growth, but I suspect my fake reef is more consistently sunny than a real one.

I'm not shedding a tear for this particular coral. I have other very large pieces of this same coral and you can see that it wasn't very healthy in general.

[Rbacchiega]

I've often thought that with regular trimming you would also be able to have the coral spread out rather than just up...sort of like trimming hedges...

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by untamed

I suppose in the wild this might just collapse on itself and spread/grow over again. Between storms and waves I would expect that wild coral never gets this far extended.

I don't generally dose anything to my tank that would cause unusually fast growth, but I suspect my fake reef is more consistently sunny than a real one.

I'm not shedding a tear for this particular coral. I have other very large pieces of this same coral and you can see that it wasn't very healthy in general.

What do you mean by far extended? Just curious because obviously corals in the ocean get many, many times larger than this without breaking off. I went on a dive after a pretty bad storm in Australia and was surprised by how little damage was done to the reef. Seems that wild colonies are just growing much stronger?

[Delphinus]

Here's my unsolicited $0.02

I think our tanks are more like gardens than they are forests, ie., they are cultivated garden reefs, not wild reefs. Thus, it's not unreasonable to expect to have to prune and manage over the long term to maintain a balance. Like plants, some corals will grow faster and some will grow slower. Think about how a forest grows, there are distinct stages or phases. First, the quick growers fill in and compete for space, but tend to be weaker or shorter lived, followed by slower growing but longer living species. (Like here in Alberta at least, Poplars are usually among the first trees to grow after an area is forested, they live for about 30 years or so, they get ridiculously tall in that timeframe, too big for their own trunks to support their own weight, so they start dieing off or falling in windstorms, leaving openings for slower growing, but longer living or stronger tree species to fill in. And so on...)

So I would think that in the wild reefs, storms and waves do likely create some damage among species like staghorns, which break off quickly. I suspect that you don't see as much damage as you expect because there is a greater diversity of species. But I have seen reefs where the ocean floor was literally littered with staghorn rubble, which in turn is brilliant fish habitat.

But because our reef tanks tend to be collections of things that interest us, it tends to be a more random assortment of species that may not necessarily inhabit reefs in the same zones or phases in the wild.

Plus there's just the challenges of maintaining ideal flow conditions, which gets harder as pieces grow, plus the challenges of static light locations, and the fact that the bases always get shaded .... I am truly amazed when someone can grow large pieces of coral without this sort of thing happening..

This thread over at RC has some amazing large specimens:
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showth...readid=1561866

Look at this beast in particular:


How on earth someone manages to grow a piece like that in a tank, is simply beyond me. That's incredible.

[Trigger Man]

just looked over the link, and all I can say is wow, I can't imagine my corals ever getting to those sizes.

[untamed]

People laugh when I say it took me 1 year to build the aquarium...but it then took me another two years to finally finish the bar! Today, it is finally done! So...I had a rum 'n coke to celebrate!



As the bar has two mirrored walls, all the fish found the other aquarium very interesting....

[Chaloupa]

OUTSTANDING! WOW just isn't enough.

[BlueAbyss]

Gah, I love your tank How's everything faring?

[untamed]

Originally Posted by BlueAbyss

Gah, I love your tank How's everything faring?

Dealing with some coral death at the moment, actually. I had this spot on where a colony of hynophora used to be, and it kept growing back and killing other coral nearby. So I attacked it that spot with a scrub brush to try to kill it. It worked, but it has triggered an outbreak of STN death in my other two large colonies of hynophora, which has also caused some tissue loss for nearby stylos. I think I'm going to lose one entire colony of the hynophora before this is done.

So...you know...pretty typical stuff.