Mixing “Like” corals

[ShawnSaucier]

Happy New Year everyone.
I’m posting to get some of your thoughts and experiences on planting the same type of corals together, just different morphs. For example, in my system I have an area with 7 types of cyphestrea slowly growing together. Not sure what is going to happen when they all meet. All out warfare? i know some chalices will war with each other, same with SPS. But what “like” corals will blend together?
Basically looking to divide my tank into mini gardens of similar type corals. Favias together, pectinia together, stylos together ect….
Looking to do mainly encrusting corals together.
Like hammers and torches, who else has done this? What kind of success have you had?? Please share pics if you’ve got them.

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Happy New Year everyone.
I’m posting to get some of your thoughts and experiences on planting the same type of corals together, just different morphs. For example, in my system I have an area with 7 types of cyphestrea slowly growing together. Not sure what is going to happen when they all meet. All out warfare? i know some chalices will war with each other, same with SPS. But what “like” corals will blend together?
Basically looking to divide my tank into mini gardens of similar type corals. Favias together, pectinia together, stylos together ect….
Looking to do mainly encrusting corals together.
Like hammers and torches, who else has done this? What kind of success have you had?? Please share pics if you’ve got them.

When two or more corals of the exact same species meet they will usually fuse together, the problem with "chaliace" corals is there is about 15 different species all labeled as chaliace, and because they are all different species they will usually start stinging eachother. For example oxypora and echnophyllia, they look the same but are definitely not

 

[TX_REEF]

I have a couple candycanes that are happy neighbors, if that helps at all. Trying to source more color morphs to fill out a candycane garden.

 

[ShawnSaucier]

When two or more corals of the exact same species meet they will usually fuse together, the problem with "chaliace" corals is there is about 15 different species all labeled as chaliace, and because they are all different species they will usually start stinging eachother. For example oxypora and echnophyllia, they look the same but are definitely not

Thank you for your reply. And I absolutely understand there being multiple species under one common name. Maybe I’m over thinking this or need to look at the root names of the corals to make it clearer for myself. I’ve been playing with favias ( yellow submarine, war coral, wolverine, and some red rimmed one) like I’ve been doing with cyphestreas, where I have 4-5 in an area, the same with stylos. Looking at maybe mixing a rainbow pectinia with my space invader, just don’t want to loose either. And wondering how far I can push this. Mixing caps and encrusting montis ?

 

[ShawnSaucier]

I have a couple candycanes that are happy neighbors, if that helps at all. Trying to source more color morphs to fill out a candycane garden.

Thank you for your reply. Yes similar idea

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

F

Thank you for your reply. And I absolutely understand there being multiple species under one common name. Maybe I’m over thinking this or need to look at the root names of the corals to make it clearer for myself. I’ve been playing with favias ( yellow submarine, war coral, wolverine, and some red rimmed one) like I’ve been doing with cyphestreas, where I have 4-5 in an area, the same with stylos. Looking at maybe mixing a rainbow pectinia with my space invader, just don’t want to loose either. And wondering how far I can push this. Mixing caps and encrusting montis ?

Favias are a risk especially with all the species under them. War coral is Favities and I'm not sure with the other ones.

 

[nsteinca]

I apologize in advance for the long post lol. I’ve tried a few iterations of gardens over the years and have found that gardens with the same species ~generally~ do fine with each other. My experience has primarily been with LPS and softies. Torches, hammers, alveopora, goniopora, caulastrea (candy cane), blastos, acans, bowers, Ricordea, RFAs, and sun corals/dendros. The biggest problem I’ve faced is spacing/shadowing. They generally play well together until limited space/lighting are at stakes. Usually one will outgrow the other and shadow the other to death. But there are definitely “rules” to follow. Examples: don’t mix Aussie and Indo torches; don’t mix torches and other euphyllia; while goniopora and alveopora are commonly called “flowerpot” they don’t mix - the goniopora will sting the crap out of the alveopora; certain gardens shouldn’t go near each other (such as Ricordea and RFA - they will battle and in my experience the Ricordea will come out on top). However, I’ve had it where 2 branching hammers that looked the same outside of color warred with each other non stop until I moved one. A recent one I’ve noticed with RFAs is that some vendors are selling Pacific RFAs due to the warm waters earlier this year in FL affecting collection of FL/Caribbean RFAs. Some Pacific ones have done okay with the FL ones while others seem to war with the FLs (so far with the Pacific ones melting off each time). So I think a decent amount of it is trial and error (whether on your part or others). If you’re just going for a garden look, my biggest recommendation outside of obvious incompatibility issues is ensuring adequate spacing/lighting for them to grow.

If you’re thinking of the garden grafting together, I’d think that’d be a little more of a difficult process to have succeed. My thinking is mainly looking at some of the vendors working on grafts of various coral species and you don’t see many new grafts coming out. So I’d think with the resources they have available, they’d generally be at the forefront of the graft game. That being said, the only way this hobby continues to progress is by trial and error - and someone’s got to do it.