Mixing leathers & sps?

[mattsilvester]

Hi folks,

Inspite of my 10yrs in the hobby, I have very little experience with corals in general (other than a few leathers, 'shrooms, and polyps), hence prehaps someone could tell me what is the deal with mixing sps corals with coft corals?

I am a little weary of the idea due to a recent experience. Unknowingly, I put a small acropora about a foot downstream of a small leather finger coral. The other sps in the tank were doing fine, but this particular one wasted away wuite quickly until someone said that the leather was responsible - so I moved the leather, and the acropora started to recover........

Was that an isolated incident or is it generally a bad idea to try and mix sps and leathers etc.?

Thanks,

Matt

[katpurdy]

the shedding the leathers do is toxic, especially to the sps...it suffocates them. The devils hand(finger leather) is the worst i believe.

[zotzer]

I'd love to add a nice yellow leather to my tank, but even the LFS I would buy it from says it can be a dangerous proposition. So for now, I just admire them in other people's tanks. :)

Tracy

[Frick-n-Frags]

maybe..........

I would have bought in further if you had another identical acro frag elsewhere that didn't suffer. Or once that one is doing better, put it back where it seemed to get roached by the leather and see if it starts again. especially a foot away, and the fact it is a small leather.

There are too many successful heavily mixed tanks out there to run with this unquestioned.

[nmywrx]

I am not currently mixing sps and softies, but I have read that most people will keep them separated in the tank and use activated carbon. The carbon will help eliminate the toxins that the softies give off. I have softies and lps and I haven't experiences and problems.

[ddresch]

I am mixing leathers and sps, mostly montipora. I attribute my success to using activated carbon, and making sure no sps too close, especially downstream, to a leather that might shed.

[Crazy4salth2o]

I limit the mixing. I have a single LARGE leather in the tank that I will fragment soon. But I have had no issues. High flow tends to mitigate negative effects.

[Malenurse]

I've learned from reading and experience that sinularia leathers should not be mixed with ANY LPS or SPS.
Chris

[mattsilvester]

I dunno - you see I have half a dozen nice sps (acro & monti) at the moment, that I really like. But I have also seen a softy tank that I really like. So I need to decide if I am going to hold course, stick with sps, or try and mix them, or steer clear of sps (trade back) and go totally softy........

Cheers,

Matt

[Malenurse]

The only solution is to start another reef!

[Misled]

That makes me think my tank must be strange. I have sps,lps and leathers in my tank, and quite a few of each. I do have quite a large skimmer and there's only one fish. I don't feed the tank much. The fish feeds off the reef, (lantern Basslet). I also have quite a bit of flow in the top of the tank but less in the bottom where the leathers are.