Most challenging corals on your reef? Mixed, Softies or Sps?

[Cjeippert]

Acans when they get fluffy, the flow rips polyps. Plus 180-230 par on sandbed is way too high for lps. Always moving around the lps to get the right shade and protection from too much flow.

My flow and light are just too high for them. I love them but currently obsessed with watching acropora grow and tend to set parameters to make them happy.

 

[reefnfun]

I have an all sps reef. I have no lps of softies, The reason is because I like sps corals, nothing against the others. I will kill a bird nest coral in a new york minute. They are considered to be a beginner coral. I can't figure it out. I have killed a few in my day.

 

[dakoop]

Acans are my nemesis

 

[DJF]

Fungias! They don’t mix with my sand wrasses and always end up getting nicked and then deteriorating rib by rib. I did have one spawn babies tho which is cool.

 

[JumpingFlea]

I would say gonis and soft corals are the most difficult for me. Gonis always do good for a week then melt away. My soft corals (besides my zoas) just stay closed and rarely open up. I have two bags of carbon in the sump and carbon in a reactor and still they stay closed. Everything else is just fine.

 

[X-37B]

Wild colonies for me. About 70% success rate. If they last a month then no issues. I also like to see them for at least 2 weeks at lfs. Problem is people will buy the nice ones as soon as they come in. I cant tell you how many times I watched them for a few weeks and saw quite a few stn over that time frame.

 

[LegendaryCG]

Haven’t had much luck with acropora tenius. Other acros do just fine but my tenius barely grow. Maybe I should try target feeding them or something.

 

[shakacuz]

Wild colonies for me. About 70% success rate. If they last a month then no issues. I also like to see them for at least 2 weeks at lfs. Problem is people will buy the nice ones as soon as they come in. I cant tell you how many times I watched them for a few weeks and saw quite a few stn over that time fram.

my LFS only carries wild colonies at ridiculous prices. i do the same with watching the over weeks to see any changes.

 

[X-37B]

my LFS only carries wild colonies at ridiculous prices. i do the same with watching the over weeks to see any changes.

Wild colnies here are around 50-100 dollars. 100 when they first come in and 50 after a few weeks.

 

[muzikalmatt]

Cool topic! I actually have two answers and neither are really due to the corals themselves being challenging to keep, it's more due to other issues/constraints within my tank.

• Any corals with large sweeper tentacles or aggression such as acan echinata, large brain corals, torches, etc. The issue is real estate. I have so little real estate left that coral warfare is inevitable, especially with corals that need a 6" buffer or more due to sweepers.
• SPS corals and brain corals due to my bicolor blenny having a taste for them. He nips at and sleeps next to my green slimer frag so it has next to no polyp extension and he pretty much ate one of my favorite brain corals (platygyra) that was the size of half a softball at one point. I can't bring myself to get rid of him though because I love his personality and he does help nip at algae, so I've learned to live with it.

 

[LRT]

I like ur shrooms what par you keep them at?

I'm running brs reccomended schedule for softies with 24" photon v2+ and back rack of 3' T5 actinic at around 18-20" off water surface. Puts me around 100 par directly under lamp on floor, 125 on back shroom rack and fades out to about 30 around the outer most edge of floor for my more light sensitive shrooms.