How do you combat coral wars?

Picassoclown

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Hey everyone! I have a question to all those who's tanks are packed with different corals. How do you stop encrusting corals from taking over? Can you cut the encrusting parts and peel them off? I would like to know how you all do it!
 
It depends on the species. Some peel off, some are tough to remove, some break off, but otherwise it's hard to avoid and a natural part of a maturing tank. As Reef Beef put it, "S is gonna grow and fight". Provided you don't see huge die off or necrosis it's not a huge deal.
 
I asked about this too several months back. So far I am just letting nature take its course. The encrusters seem to meet each other and some small bleached DMZ zone seems to develop dividing the 2 corals but nothing further seems to happen thus far. I actually find the whole thing very interesting on our small scale tanks and wonder how the big battles wage in the open ocean reefs for space and survival.
 
So there are ways to prevent corals stinging each other, generally you just give each one enough space and when they eventually grow closer to each other you would frag them.

As for encrusting corals like Acros, Montis and chalices, it is generally advised to glue them to a rubble and the rubble itself to your rockwork. This allows you to remove the coral before it is able to encrust over your rocks and than you'll be able to either restart the colony, snip it back or to glue to a bigger rock.

This technique is also advised for other corals as well, as keeping an easy option to remove corals from their place would allow you to move them to a different location to meet their flow/lighting conditions or to treat them against pests/STN/RTN etc.

It is also highly recommended to keep GSP, zoas, palys, shrooms and others constrained to their own rocks as these would colonize (and terrorize) your whole tank if not kept in check.
 

IF YOU HAD TO TAKE A REEFING EXAM, WOULD YOU PASS?

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