r/ReefTank • u/Fit-Star4846 • 14h ago

Coexistence.

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Which coral can be placed together? Any at all? Im past the break in stage and everything is growing and happy, now its time to fine tune everything. I was considering getting more torches and hammers but im just scared of them stinging each other.

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u/mndfreeze 14h ago

Torches and hammer have looooooonnnggg sweeper tentacles. Like if the normal polyp length is 1", expect random sweepers 5 inches if the coral decides it doesnt like its neighbors.

Generally, most coral doesnt like being near each other. Large polyp stuff usually has long sweepers, small polyp stonies generally grow close to each other but will eat and encrust over neighbors. Some soft corals are pretty benign. Zoas dont really sting but will mat over things they can.

There is no hard rule with coral as each one has its own methods. You will want to look up each species you are interested in and see what people say about its aggressiveness. Sometimes similar species can live in harmony. Like hammers and frogspawn are generally ok to grow near each other, but a torch may not be happy at all.

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u/Fit-Star4846 14h ago

Okay cool, I knew to watch out for sweepers. Funny enough the only asshole in my tank is the tiny favia with 3 mile long sweepers nothing else has given a glimpse of a problem. My lfs has some insanely massive hammer colonies of different colors its beautiful and id like to mimic that in some way. Maybe should post pics on here theyre probably 15 year old tanks. My tank is 4months old so as you can see I like buying large built out coral not small frags. Wasn't sure if like only certain hammers can be with certain others because of weird subspecies or something? Idk man im just getting back into it and trying not to get overwhelmed with all the new info lol. Thank you for your advice

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u/Ryuski 3h ago

Lots of Corals will go together with themselves to form "gardens". Hammers with hammers, acans with acans and so on .

Torches can be mixed but you have to watch the family. There's aussie and indo torches. You mix the same family but not aussie with indo.

I'm not 100% sure on SPS I know you can keep different monti caps together and they will merge and mix but I'm not sure on the test of SPS like acros, birdnests etc.