Placement Of Corals

[karaim]

I plan on setting up a reef tank (currently have a FOWLR) and I am just looking for some general information regarding placement of corals. I don't know much about corals and am doing my research right now, but can somebody tell me how far apart corals are supposed to be placed from one another? As far as I know, corals can fight amongst themselves, thus how much space should one leave between 2 different corals?

What if it is the same coral, but just different colonies (let's say I get 2 button polyps from different sources) - can I place them close together or will they fight amongst themselves as well?

Would it be best to leave 1 coral per rock? If so, can't the coral just spread to other rocks? Also what I don't understand is how I often see pictures with corals packed together in a nano tank and the tank seems to be thriving.


Thanks for any help.

 

[Colin_T]

different corals open up different amounts, thus you need to give each type of coral more or less space. eg: torch corals (Euphillia sp) can open up 3-4inches more than the skeleton. Other corals like brain corals only open up a small amount, maybe 1/2inch, but they can produce sweeper tentacles that come out at night and sting things. Sweeper tentacles can e up to 18inches long but most are about 6inches. Some corals have sweeper tentacles and others don't.
Generally you want at least a couple of inches between corals, even if they are the same type. Button corals and coral morphs will eventually spread over the rocks and come in contact with each other. If this happens naturally it isn't a proiblem, but if you just stick them together they will fight. Most other corals will fight when they come in contact with another coral, resulting in the death of at least one coral.
If the corals are next to each other, but unable to touch each other, then they will be fine. Often in nano reef tanks the corals are stacked up on the rocks. And the rocks are stacked up like steps. Therefore the corals might only be a few inches apart in height, but they are also several inches away from front to back.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Yeah as colin said different corals require different spacing. A lot of soft corals are pretty much ok to be fairly close together whereas LPs and SPS tend to be more aggressive and need more space. This is only in general though and is not a fixed guide so you need to look at each species individually.

You also need to consider how quickly they grow. Green Star polyps and xenia for example can grow and move really quickly under the right conditions and I have have my xenia complete overgrown nearby corals (and move over a couple of inches in a matter of weeks). So you need to also think about how much growing space you need to give them.