400 gallon project

JDigital · #1 02-08-2009, 08:45 PM

Damn... Sorry to hear man!

Great video though of better times.

tonytboss · #2 02-08-2009, 09:25 PM

Sorry Brad
The frag you gave me is still going strong ... thanks

Trigger Man · #3 02-08-2009, 09:30 PM

Sorry to hear about the tang, I thought it would have pulled through.

untamed · #4 02-17-2009, 05:30 AM

The tank is approaching two years old now. It seems to have an entirely new set of challenges now.

Some of the faster growing coral heads are simply collapsing under their own weight. Well...Freckles (aka "the submarine") might give them a gentle nudge. But they inevitably snap off right at their tiny base.

Here's today's frag!

As the coral gets really large, the inner/lower areas don't get any light and tend to die off. As a result the coral just adds weight to it's top and never reinforces the bottom. It would seem that a healthy dose of constant trimming is the ticket to longer term, sustainable, large coral heads. (at least with faster growing types)

Trigger Man · #5 02-17-2009, 05:41 AM

I wonder why this does not happen in the ocean. I was wondering the same thing as I notice that my bases of many of my corals don't seem very thick, and I figure this may be caused by my dosing which causes the coral to grow quickly and more slender, where as without dosing maybe the coral would have grown slower but thicker. So do you dose your tank (i don't remember)?

Quote:

Originally Posted by untamed

The tank is approaching two years old now. It seems to have an entirely new set of challenges now.

Some of the faster growing coral heads are simply collapsing under their own weight. Well...Freckles (aka "the submarine") might give them a gentle nudge. But they inevitably snap off right at their tiny base.

Here's today's frag!

As the coral gets really large, the inner/lower areas don't get any light and tend to die off. As a result the coral just adds weight to it's top and never reinforces the bottom. It would seem that a healthy dose of constant trimming is the ticket to longer term, sustainable, large coral heads. (at least with faster growing types)

untamed · #6 02-17-2009, 05:50 AM

I suppose in the wild this might just collapse on itself and spread/grow over again. Between storms and waves I would expect that wild coral never gets this far extended.

I don't generally dose anything to my tank that would cause unusually fast growth, but I suspect my fake reef is more consistently sunny than a real one.

I'm not shedding a tear for this particular coral. I have other very large pieces of this same coral and you can see that it wasn't very healthy in general.

Rbacchiega · #7 02-17-2009, 06:06 AM

I've often thought that with regular trimming you would also be able to have the coral spread out rather than just up...sort of like trimming hedges...

GreenSpottedPuffer · #8 02-17-2009, 05:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by untamed

I suppose in the wild this might just collapse on itself and spread/grow over again. Between storms and waves I would expect that wild coral never gets this far extended.

I don't generally dose anything to my tank that would cause unusually fast growth, but I suspect my fake reef is more consistently sunny than a real one.

I'm not shedding a tear for this particular coral. I have other very large pieces of this same coral and you can see that it wasn't very healthy in general.

What do you mean by far extended? Just curious because obviously corals in the ocean get many, many times larger than this without breaking off. I went on a dive after a pretty bad storm in Australia and was surprised by how little damage was done to the reef. Seems that wild colonies are just growing much stronger?