ID these corals!

[Bob Wiley]

Help me out as I'm not a coral head. This is a feature tank at a local restaurant that I've always admired. I love the green carpet and how it sways in the flow. There are other corals in the tank, but I'm mainly interested in the green.

Initial googling says they may be green star, or metallic green star polyps?

 

[Everything Aquatics]

Green star polyp

 

[Qasimja]

metallic green star polyp i have the same covering a large rock in my tank

 

[Qasimja]

 

[Flippers4pups]

Help me out as I'm not a coral head. This is a feature tank at a local restaurant that I've always admired. I love the green carpet and how it sways in the flow. There are other corals in the tank, but I'm mainly interested in the green.

Initial googling says they may be green star, or metallic green star polyps?

A prime example of when GSP goes berserk! Lol

 

[Bob Wiley]

A prime example of when GSP goes berserk! Lol

I see this is a good beginner coral?
But how do you keep it from going "berserk"?
Especially if in a nano tank...

 

[uhgster1]

You keep it on a rock by itself AWAY from the other rocks. That will keep it going for a while. If it really likes your tank it will start to send off “runners” like real lawn grass and spread. I would bet money that the tank you were looking at was not intended as a gsp only tank in the beginning. If you don’t consistently frag it it will spread over the sand and cover your entire tank.

 

[Bob Wiley]

You keep it on a rock by itself AWAY from the other rocks. That will keep it going for a while. If it really likes your tank it will start to send off “runners” like real lawn grass and spread. I would bet money that the tank you were looking at was not intended as a gsp only tank in the beginning. If you don’t consistently frag it it will spread over the sand and cover your entire tank.

Gotcha.
Just wondering if in a nano tank it'd even be feasible. There is really only room for one "rock", so to speak. I guess you could split rocks into different corners, but the small area would mean they'd always been close to each other.

And whether or not it was intended, I do like the look of that tank as gsp-only. But I'm not confident I could put it in our nano tank and keep it constrained to the rock work.

Oh and if this did overtake all your rock, how would that affect organisms that live in/around the rock? Like a Barnacle Blenny or Pistol Shrimp/Watchman Goby?

 

[Bob Wiley]

Very cool!
Do you have to spend a lot of effort keeping it constrained to that rock?

 

[Qasimja]

Very cool!
Do you have to spend a lot of effort keeping it constrained to that rock?

No it's not touching anything so it's pretty isolated

 

[Bob Wiley]

No it's not touching anything so it's pretty isolated

Do you recall about how long it took to fill out that whole rock?

 

[Qasimja]

i got the rock about 5 months ago and it was a little less then halfway covered and now the top is completely covered

 

[uhgster1]

I used to have it on the back glass door n a 10 gallon Nuvo. But like I said before, it spread like wildfire and I was trimming it once a month.

 

[Bob Wiley]

I used to have it on the back glass door n a 10 gallon Nuvo. But like I said before, it spread like wildfire and I was trimming it once a month.

What do you do with it after you trim it? Just throw it away?