Thick-branched Frogspawn placement

[Muffin87]

Tomorrow I'm finally getting a much coveted thick-branched Frogspawn (Euphyllia yaeyamaensis) for my 16G.

It's gonna be rather big (see pic), but since January I've only seen two to be sold in Italy. This is the second!

 

I originally wanted to place it at the top of my rockwork (yellow area in the pic) to stop it from stinging other corals, but then I thought of the drawbacks

• Too strong lights at the top.
• Air exposure during water changes:
  I read SaltWaterAquariumBlog you should "Never lift a Frogspawn coral out of the water with the polyps inflated or they will get damaged, tear and you could potentially lose the entire colony".  Is that right? or just a very rare occurrence?

 

I could place it on the sand (red area), but again

• I'd be forced to move it every time I need to syphon the sand
• I read "any of the flesh that gets buried in your substrate will die". Is that also right?

 

I could place it on the rock where the trumpets are at the moment, but from there it could sting any coral I wanna add, and again it would get exposed to air during a large water change.

 

 Do you guys have any suggestions as to where I could place it?

 

Is the "6-inch away from any other coral" rule valid for the thick-branched Frogspawn as well? Or maybe not since it has shorter tentacles?

 

Thanks a lot to everyone.

 

[Euphylin me]

red circle you have in the pic....this will allow the colony alot of room to grow and will look amazing!...i keep mine on the sand bed and it loves it! and about it being damaged when picking up out of water....yes you can the skeleton is very sharp and the tenticles are delicate. i did this once and it tore a some. its best to wave a bunch of water at it with your hand to get it to close. and yes i would keep away from other corals other than hammers as frogspawn do sting....but i butt my frogspawn right next to my hammers in my little euphyllia garden

[Muffin87]

1 hour ago, Euphylin me said:

i keep mine on the sand bed

Did you place the skeleton on any support/stand? I read some glued it on a piece of PVC tubing, and then placed it on the sandbed.

This way the tentacles are a bit further from the sand.

 

1 hour ago, Euphylin me said:

its best to wave a bunch of water at it with your hand to get it to close.

good info! Thanks!

[Euphylin me]

No problem! As far as the sand bed...it depends on how big the base (stalk) is if it's long enough and your sand bed is deep enough you don't need to support it but you could always glue it to small rock

[paneubert]

14 hours ago, Muffin87 said:

Did you place the skeleton on any support/stand? I read some glued it on a piece of PVC tubing, and then placed it on the sandbed.

This way the tentacles are a bit further from the sand.

I have a couple clear acrylic tube pieces that I have used as you describe, but I did not find the need to glue anything.  I just put the coral in the tube like you would put flowers into a vase.  Assuming the base of your frogspawn is narrow, all you have to do is ensure the tube is narrow enough to only allow the coral to go down far enough to support it from tipping over.

 

I assume clear acrylic tubing would be a lot harder to find than just running to the hardware store for some white (or black) PVC, but the concept is the same.  Both will encrust with coralline algae over time either way.