RE: Coral Warfare?

[Randy1]

After installing MH we have been buying more SPS but I'm hearing something about corals engaging in "chemical warfare" with others like leathers. Can someone explain this? who's typically the aggressor?

[inwall75]

Since corals can't exactly get up and move around easily, they've come up with a number of methods of protecting their little slice of the ocean.

Chemical warfare is used by a number of corals and some are more aggressive than others. Sinularia spp. and Sarcophyton spp. are quite dangerous to SPS. Believe it or not, the lowly coralimorphs discosoma and actinodiscus (mushrooms) are fairly rough on their SPS neighbors as well. Carbon can be used to negate many of these aleopathic chemicals but I would mainly recommend not having a "garden" type of tank as their care needs are so different. Overstocked SPS tanks can run into problems too because they will try to "outpoison" their neighbors. Again, carbon is your friend here as well as waterchanges.

Many LPS corals utilize sweeper tentacles the sting the living daylights out of their neighbors so care should be used when placing in a tank. There is one SPS that's pretty aggressive with it's sweepers. It's one of my favorites.....Hydnophora. There might be other SPS that have sweepers, that's just the only one I know about.

SPS are usually the losers when it comes to chemical warfare.

[zhenya]

Curt,

Actually, all stony corals from the family Merulinidae produce sweepers(for example), and so are many others( Oculinids, Pectinids and many more). Not all of them have small polyps, though. ;)

I agree with you that keeping mixed reefs is quite difficult and sometimes just down right impossible if you don't run carbon continuosly and stay on top of water changes. I had some links to the articles about effects of allelopathy(on corals and even fish) but can't seem to find them at the moment. I'll post some as soon as I find them.

[Randy1]

Well I started out with the easier, cheaper corals but now would like to further the sps's. That was exactly my intention was to keep a mixed (Garden) tank but it sounds like I'm headed for trouble. I'll start carbon just in case.