A softie for "weed" corals

Tokyo Viking · Sep 1, 2018

I wanna start by saying that I have been in the marine aquarium hobby for a few years now and I would like to address a bit derogatory term that I often see in reefing forums. The term is "weed" corals. Personally, I absolutely love these corals. They are fantastic corals for beginners and leisure reefers. They are often cheap, hearty, fast growing, resilient, beautiful and interesting corals. I'm talking about xenias, daisies, snowflakes, cloves, star polyps and mushrooms; all the fast growing, easy to care for softies, that are notorious for taking over hard coral dedicated tanks. A lot of people that are interested in starting marine aquariums are often turned off by the experts that over emphasize a hyper level of care and dedication when setting up and maintaining a reef tank. Their SPS bias sadly makes it sound like it's almost impossible to set up a reef tank unless you buy a huge aquarium, set up a complex lighting system, invest in a high tech dosing apparatus, and dedicate hours and hours and hours to managing your parameters with fancy expensive equipment. This really is sad because the truth is that if you start with a nano cube with a few beginner corals, you can with minimal effort start an amazing reef tank and enjoy this wonderful hobby at your leisure.

Katrina71 · Sep 1, 2018

Bravo!!!

PDR · Sep 1, 2018

Tokyo Viking said:
I wanna start by saying that I have been in the marine aquarium hobby for a few years now and I would like to address a bit derogatory term that I often see in reefing forums. The term is "weed" corals. Personally, I absolutely love these corals. They are fantastic corals for beginners and leisure reefers. They are often cheap, hearty, fast growing, resilient, beautiful and interesting corals. I'm talking about xenias, daisies, snowflakes, cloves, star polyps and mushrooms; all the fast growing, easy to care for softies, that are notorious for taking over hard coral dedicated tanks. A lot of people that are interested in starting marine aquariums are often turned off by the experts that over emphasize a hyper level of care and dedication when setting up and maintaining a reef tank. Their SPS bias sadly makes it sound like it's almost impossible to set up a reef tank unless you buy a huge aquarium, set up a complex lighting system, invest in a high tech dosing apparatus, and dedicate hours and hours and hours to managing your parameters with fancy expensive equipment. This really is sad because the truth is that if you start with a nano cube with a few beginner corals, you can with minimal effort start an amazing reef tank and enjoy this wonderful hobby at your leisure.

Couldn't agree more!

cgdcinc · Sep 2, 2018

[emoji106]

ThunderGoose · Sep 2, 2018

THANK YOU. I'm relatively new to the hobby and I've been put off the easy corals b/c they are referred to as weeds and I keep hearing how people regret them and they take over. Guess what? I've been struggling and struggling with my corals. I probably would've been better off starting with these weedy soft coral. Certainly it would have been less stressful.

Ron Reefman · Sep 2, 2018

Extremely well put and a good affirmative argument.

After 15 years in the hobby I still have a nice colony of pulsing xenia because I love its look and its movement. Although the rest of my tank is specializes toward corals that are easy to keep (mostly zoas) and that fluoresce well.

On the other hand, our yard has way more weeds than grass and we are perfectly OK with that. Down here in SW Florida most grasses die back during the dry season (Nov-May). The only one that seems to do OK requires watering all dry season so many people add irrigation systems. We just live with the weeds and cut it as if it were grass. Heck, we've even added a mimosa vine and peanut grass to the yard in hopes that they will spread and look better than the brown grass and weeds (and even bare spots) every winter. Besides, the mimosa has a pretty purple 'puffball' flower and the peanut grass does a nice little yellow flower. We're hoping that in a couple of years we'll have a 'hippy' lawn with purple and yellow flowers all over it! ;Jawdrop