got ethical husbandry?

Peter's Garage Tank

I'm sure you (he?) knows this but the green star polyps and the xenia will grow like crazy all the way to "damn why did I put that in here in the first place" levels. As will that little aiptasia that's under the frag of xenia ;) Now there's nothing necessarily wrong with that either if that's what you want. One of my favorite tanks was one that was all soft corals that I just let grow wild.
 
I second ripping out the star polyps and Xenia while you can. Star polyps can also sting and kill corals like montipora.


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Or isolate them [gsp] on a rock so they don't spread. I keep my 2 different species on 2 rocks


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I had no idea they were so invasive and "vicious":) I guess when you put 170#s of rocks from other peoples tanks into your tank, you are going to get some undesirable creatures. For me, I am just a "support" person on his tanks and take care of the mechanicals and money and I leave him to play with them and make the decisions on what he does or doesn't want in there. Off to work.
Cheers!
 
Well as I said, there's nothing wrong with those corals if you want a soft coral tank that is full of all those "invasive" types of corals. It's just you will be limited to you can keep, a tank full of them, gsp, xenia, common mushrooms, fast growing palythoas like the ones you have, kenya tree, etc, and everything can be held in check fairly easily you'll just have a really full tank. The upside is you don't have to worry about things like calcium and alkalinity as well.

The reality is all corals are "invasive", they grow and compete for light/space and don't care about any other corals other than to destroy them if they get too close, the largest difference is some corals just grow so much faster than others, and for things like SPS corals you can very easily stay ahead of them by chopping off parts of them if they grow too much in one direction, soft corals tend to grow much faster and are a bit more difficult to pull off rocks.

Choosing what kind of corals to keep is in a way the same if not more daunting than fish compatibility.

Here are some images to help give you an idea about how crazy they can get, and it really doesn't take THAT long.

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robstank.jpg

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Or better yet remove the rock it's on from the tank. But do it now.
Might be smart to have some peppermint shrimp in there just in case. That's unlikely to be by itself...
 
Mark B said:
I actually like Peter's Zenia. It is a pulsating type and it is kinda fun to watch the individual polyps open and close.
Click to expand...
That's how it happens. It starts by liking them, and ends with hating them. I like them but don't want them in my tank... damn genevas rock I added
 
Yup remove the rock, get some snippers, and chip off the piece of the rock where the offending creature is. The "one to watch" isn't one to watch, it's one to deal with now before it gets out of control.

He's right though the other one on closer inspection doesn't look like aiptasia, it looks like a majano anemone, which is in the same category as aiptasia in that you should get rid of it asap, same thing, pull the rock out, chip off the rock where it's attached, don't try to scrape it off all you need is a little tiny bit connected for them to regenerate.

If you did get this rock from another tank that was breaking down you can almost guarantee there is more on the rock and you should be vigilant with "keeping an eye on" what pops up. I would not assume anything that came on the rock is what is good for the tank.
 
First pic #50 looks a bit like Majano, but has too long of a stalk, so pretty sure it is Aptasia.
Last 3 pics #52 are definitely Aptasia.

I have both. Aptasia is annoying. Majanos are evil.
 
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