When your corals are this big...

[malx]

Hi, All.

Question: What do you guys think this person does with his corals each month? https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XxZsHInV8Rw/maxresdefault.jpg

Do you think he has to go in there and frag off pieces because they complete for space/light?

Anyone have a densely packed tank? I'm striving for one and all of my frags/mini colonies are mounted in clusters. I am trying to ready myself for what kind of pruning I'll need to do when stuff starts to overgrow.

Let me know!
Joey

[WatDatThing]

I'm sure he frag them. If you sell them cheap enough. They will fly off the shelf.

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[takayan]

Who's tank?

[malx]

Who's tank?

I just googled ZEOvit tank online because I knew it would pull it up. It's some Japanese dude I think. Here's some info on it:

http://www.spsholic.com/entry/MRkangTank?ckattempt=1

And there's a video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_t3zXSpX4g

I'm good at finding stuff :D

[takayan]

I see. The guy is Korean.

[malx]

I see. The guy is Korean.

Thanks. Sorry can't tell the difference in the writing.

[takayan]

I heard that corals grow slow with zeovit. I'm not sure if it is true.

[Bpb]

I'm offended you would get that wrong. Jk.

Seriously though. When peoples corals get that size they often take to shipping them once their local
Market is saturated. He may not sell on reef central but I'm betting he either has a steady flow of regular customers or he supplies the LFS with frags and gets store credit. That's what people do who I know with tanks comparable to that. Once everyone in town has spent as much as they care to they just start selling to the LFS and shipping them out on forums


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[malx]

I heard that corals grow slow with zeovit. I'm not sure if it is true.

I had some STN issues that everyone was telling me it was because of ZEOvit but turned out not to be. Now that my STN issues are solved, my corals have been growing really fast.

[RogueGrown]

How fast are we talking? I understand it varies coral to coral, but what's a fast growth rate? What kind of growth would be exceptable for say Zoanthids or your common birdsnest? I have a superman Monti that I see growth weekly from. Where as I have two different birdsnest on has been doing what I'd consider well and the other I've had for 3 months I've seen next to zero growth from. I'm only about 7 months into my first reef so I apologize if this is a stupid question or even the wrong place to be asking.

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[malx]

How fast are we talking? I understand it varies coral to coral, but what's a fast growth rate? What kind of growth would be exceptable for say Zoanthids or your common birdsnest? I have a superman Monti that I see growth weekly from. Where as I have two different birdsnest on has been doing what I'd consider well and the other I've had for 3 months I've seen next to zero growth from. I'm only about 7 months into my first reef so I apologize if this is a stupid question or even the wrong place to be asking.

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I don't have zoas. But in three day my birds nest grew about 1mm new branches all over the place. Two weeks later they are a few mm bigger and have polyps all over them. In one week one of my montis grew about 2mm and a week later began to encrust the rock that it ran into after growing over the space.


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[RogueGrown]

Please share to me your secrets 😂 lol I've had good growth from my birdsnest as you've described but only from one. And now that my Monti has gotten comfortable I've seen about a 1mm per week on most sides of it. The polyps on all my SPS are very well extended as well.

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[jda]

That tank probably has another six months before it needs regular pruning or else the stuff with start to kill each other as it touches.

You can get a tank like this in about three years from 1" frags if you have the best of breed water quality and lights and an already-established tank - this is with acros. If you have birdsnest, montis, stylos then you will see why hard core SPSers won't let any of them in their tanks since they can take over a tank even faster. 10% monthly water changes, MH, CaRx and near-zero nutrients, but not ULNS, will get you there the fastest IME.

Once the colonies are about the size as the ones in the first post (baseball to softball size), you will see if your tank has what it takes to continue. Colonies are a totally different animal than frags. They need more light from more angles (this is where reflectors or wide 8-10 bulb T5 setups have a huge advantage). This size the point where some start to recede from the base up and just grow at the top - this is when you know that you have to up your game to grow colonies or just prune back and start again with frags.

I used to have the LFS guy come and prune my tanks every month or two. He would do all of the work, sell the frags and let me know how much he owed me in credit - he would do livestock or dry goods which is where I got my tastes for deepwater and higher end reef fish since after a while it is hard to spend all of the credit. He would also make sure that I got the best stuff to keep me as a supplier. This is a good win:win since LFS always loves high quality local frags of named corals and I did not have to do much work. He could easily take out 100 frags at $10-30 credit every month, or so. If you can find a LFS to do this, then you can have a really great time - if you can just keep them stocked with the basics like Cali, Oregon, Pearlberry, Lime in the Sky, a nice Tricolor, Blue Matrix, Garf, Pink Lemonaide, then they will love you. If you can mix in a Purple Monster from time to time, they will love you even more.

[bshow24]

Please share to me your secrets 😂 lol I've had good growth from my birdsnest as you've described but only from one. And now that my Monti has gotten comfortable I've seen about a 1mm per week on most sides of it. The polyps on all my SPS are very well extended as well.

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Birdsnest and Montis, as jda stated, grow like weeds. These should be growing rapidly, if they weren't, you have a problem haha.

[Hentz]

Well Joey, we have that guy Michael here in Vegas that trims multiple Acro's and various SPS monthly because they grow so fast.

Spent an hour and a half the other day at Aquatic Treasures talking with him. It's just funny to hear someone complain about trimming his coral so much which is what a lot of us try to achieve. He will often bring in cut frags to AT in trade for store credit. He will also bring a bunch of frags to swaps and sell various Acropora like Red Planet and what not for super cheap. I shouldn't say frags, I should say mini-colonies lol.

Though aside from that to reply to @takayan with his statement, "I heard that corals grow slow with zeovit. I'm not sure if it is true."

I completely disagree. I'v ran ZEOvit for over a year now with tremendous growth and color. In my current downgrade, I'm noticing growth every 2-3 days on most of my Acropora. My Walt Disney is quickly encrusting and has 2 branches popping out, something that wasn't there about a week ago.

Here are some growth shots of about the same difference in time:
Teal Acropora under T5 moved to my upgrade with Hydra 26HD's and ZEOvit. Developed a really pretty color and nearly doubled in size in just 3-4 months:

http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p764/HentzReef/My%20Acro_zpsaurnv16l.jpg (http://s1350.photobucket.com/user/HentzReef/media/My%20Acro_zpsaurnv16l.jpg.html)

Here is another growth shot. This is of my Red Dragon that was in my ZEOvit system the whole time. This grew a little over double in size in the short amount of time. This includes multiple frags, falling off the rock with multiple pieces breaking off. You will also notice the color difference in before/after. The before is when I received the mini-colony from a local reefer who ran a non-ZEOvit tank. The ZEOvit took it from the Dark Pink/Red it was and changed the color to a more pastel Pink with blueish growth tips (as ZEOvit will give more pastel colors, shows it was working amazing). Also grown under Hydra 26HD's:

http://i1350.photobucket.com/albums/p764/HentzReef/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsfi8znauf.jpeg (http://s1350.photobucket.com/user/HentzReef/media/Mobile%20Uploads/image_zpsfi8znauf.jpeg.html)

[malx]

That tank probably has another six months before it needs regular pruning or else the stuff with start to kill each other as it touches.

You can get a tank like this in about three years from 1" frags if you have the best of breed water quality and lights and an already-established tank - this is with acros. If you have birdsnest, montis, stylos then you will see why hard core SPSers won't let any of them in their tanks since they can take over a tank even faster. 10% monthly water changes, MH, CaRx and near-zero nutrients, but not ULNS, will get you there the fastest IME.

Once the colonies are about the size as the ones in the first post (baseball to softball size), you will see if your tank has what it takes to continue. Colonies are a totally different animal than frags. They need more light from more angles (this is where reflectors or wide 8-10 bulb T5 setups have a huge advantage). This size the point where some start to recede from the base up and just grow at the top - this is when you know that you have to up your game to grow colonies or just prune back and start again with frags.

I used to have the LFS guy come and prune my tanks every month or two. He would do all of the work, sell the frags and let me know how much he owed me in credit - he would do livestock or dry goods which is where I got my tastes for deepwater and higher end reef fish since after a while it is hard to spend all of the credit. He would also make sure that I got the best stuff to keep me as a supplier. This is a good win:win since LFS always loves high quality local frags of named corals and I did not have to do much work. He could easily take out 100 frags at $10-30 credit every month, or so. If you can find a LFS to do this, then you can have a really great time - if you can just keep them stocked with the basics like Cali, Oregon, Pearlberry, Lime in the Sky, a nice Tricolor, Blue Matrix, Garf, Pink Lemonaide, then they will love you. If you can mix in a Purple Monster from time to time, they will love you even more.

Good tip about the lighting from different angels. From the looks of the video it appears this guy has T5s now with some Kessil LEDs on angles to hit the sides. I have a similar lighting setup.

[malx]

Please share to me your secrets 😂 lol I've had good growth from my birdsnest as you've described but only from one. And now that my Monti has gotten comfortable I've seen about a 1mm per week on most sides of it. The polyps on all my SPS are very well extended as well.

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I have no secrets to share my tank has been through hell and high-water. What worked for me may not work for you. If you want the full story read my thread on STN here. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2621371 The last post I wrote here has the 4 things I found in my system that seemed to have get me from STN to growing corals, but it wasn't what everyone thought it could be. A local reefer pointed it out.

[RogueGrown]

I have no secrets to share my tank has been through hell and high-water. What worked for me may not work for you. If you want the full story read my thread on STN here. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2621371 The last post I wrote here has the 4 things I found in my system that seemed to have get me from STN to growing corals, but it wasn't what everyone thought it could be. A local reefer pointed it out.
Thank you for the link, I'll read it tonight. I'd really like to learn what I'm doing here. I almost picked up some an acro the other day but decided against it as my few SPS are still new to my system and I want to make sure they'll actually grow well. Part of my problem is my tank is smaller and it's still very young.

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[malx]

Thank you for the link, I'll read it tonight. I'd really like to learn what I'm doing here. I almost picked up some an acro the other day but decided against it as my few SPS are still new to my system and I want to make sure they'll actually grow well. Part of my problem is my tank is smaller and it's still very young.

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My tank is only 56

[RogueGrown]

My tank is only 56
My current tank is a 20 long with about 13 gallons of water. I do two water changes a week totaling at about 5 gallons. I'm in the middle of refinishing a stand for a 50 cube I recently got from SCA.

I started reading the link you sent me, I too ended up with a nice chunk of green plating Monti last weekend. We will see how it goes. I wasn't sure if it was a more difficult SPS to take on thank some of the other so I gave it a shot for $15 I couldn't pass it bye lol

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[RogueGrown]

It's about 4"... like I said I couldn't pass it uphttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170412/32616ad70cb83749b7ade47c96f4f41c.jpg

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[malx]

My current tank is a 20 long with about 13 gallons of water. I do two water changes a week totaling at about 5 gallons. I'm in the middle of refinishing a stand for a 50 cube I recently got from SCA.

I started reading the link you sent me, I too ended up with a nice chunk of green plating Monti last weekend. We will see how it goes. I wasn't sure if it was a more difficult SPS to take on thank some of the other so I gave it a shot for $15 I couldn't pass it bye lol

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Size matters to an extent. If you can keep good water quality and don't put in fish that like to swim around small tanks are fine. Hell I have a 16" carpet anemone in a 10gallon with a clownfish and he's doing great. Eats like a pig and I do a 20% water change every Friday. Hell I don't even run a skimmer. I dose ZEO products

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170412/19c3f1b2c7699788dc747938adf7b7ac.jpg

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20170412/031f108cb17bc0991fb65f81cceb03fb.jpg


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[ca1ore]

Took 3 years for my 265 to go from small frags to massive colonies; and now its full and facing a significant pruning job. So big that I'm toying with just getting a bigger tank at the same time :lol:. I still like and grow the birdsnest, montis and unfortunately pocilopora. Latter requires monitoring otherwise it would spread around the entire tank. LED's grow coral just fine, though shading problems as the corals grow means double the number of fixtures you thought you'd need.

[jda]

That three years is critical. You can pretty much overgow a tank in that amount of time of you don't crash or have failures. The next reboot is faster, around two years, because your tank is mature already and you are well past that first year crapshoot of a new tank. The first time that you have to destroy a Leng Sy Cap the size of a Thanksgiving turkey platter or a Ultimate Stag with probably three hundred branches and your heart breaks (those were my first two tear outs), you will never again want stuff to grow as fast as possible - this is the SPS'er equivalent of rooting for coraline to start to grow.

Every reboot you remove something that grows too fast or drives you crazy - this is where many abandon the birdsnest and montis. You also get better at positioning - stags at the bottom, tables in the open areas, etc.