Small polyped favia aggression?

[Tired]

I have a little frag of a favia that has about 1/2" polyps, and I'm wondering how far away I can expect its sweepers to reach when it gets a little bigger. I assume large-polyped favias can sting further away.

 

How far away do the smaller-polyped favia species usually manage to sting? A couple inches? 

[jambon]

I have a war coral with maybe half inch sweepers... right now it is being nudged by a larger colony of zoas... I am hoping the war coral wins this battle.

[jservedio]

Favias aren't aggressive until one day they decide to be and then go on the warpath. When they do, they can be some of the nastiest LPS there are. They can hit from at least 2" from my experience if the flow is in their favor and they will nuke absolutely anything they go after. Be extremely careful with what you put near them and especially down stream of them. They will happily grow in the direction of danger as well and they can grow very fast once they get going. They need a lot of room.

 

 

[Tired]

Hm, good to know. I got this frag as a freebie, and I may end up rehoming it once it gets a bit larger- I don't have entirely enough room to give it a nice radius once it starts getting big. 

[jservedio]

Just now, Tired said:

Hm, good to know. I got this frag as a freebie, and I may end up rehoming it once it gets a bit larger- I don't have entirely enough room to give it a nice radius once it starts getting big. 

Trade it for a micromussa of some sort. I don't know how big your tank is, but favias don't really belong in something like a smaller pico if you plan on having anything else. Micros don't really fight anything and even when it's touching them, if they do fight it's only over maybe 1/4" and it isn't a strong attack. I've got a micromussa amakusensis that's been in direct contact with a monti, an acro, zoas, palys, and another micro lord for years on end and this is the biggest "fight" I've had with it, for scale it's polyps are only 1/4" across and it didn't attack the acro until it was literally preventing it from expanding - they are without question the ideal LPS for a small tank. This isn't some small frag either - it's damn near 100 polyps now.

 

[Tired]

It's a 4.5gal tank, so I don't have much room for this guy. I have a spot in the corner I can put it for now, while it's still tiny, where all it can sting is macroalgae. But I'll definitely rehome it at some point. I'd just like to see if I can get it to start encrusting onto the frag disc and putting out a couple more polyps- fattening it up for sale, as it were.

 

Aw, such a polite coral! "Excuse me, please stop poking me".

I have one acan lord already, and am keeping an eye out for more in the group with colors I like. Never seen one with quarter-inch polyps, though, that's tiny. I'll have to try to find a bitty one like that. Where did you get yours? The color is nice. 

 

Blastos don't usually sting anything, right? I know every blasto vs something else fight I read about, the blasto loses badly.

[jservedio]

14 minutes ago, Tired said:

Aw, such a polite coral! "Excuse me, please stop poking me".

I have one acan lord already, and am keeping an eye out for more in the group with colors I like. Never seen one with quarter-inch polyps, though, that's tiny. I'll have to try to find a bitty one like that. Where did you get yours? The color is nice. 

It's not a Micromussa Lordhowensis, it's a Micromussa Amakusensis. I got it from Unique Corals in 2014 or so. They don't pop up super often, but when they do they are generally much, much nicer than mine. The "UFO Micro" morph is super cool if you can find one. Generally pretty expensive to get online, and I don't do expensive for corals so I don't have one yet!

  

14 minutes ago, Tired said:

Blastos don't usually sting anything, right? I know every blasto vs something else fight I read about, the blasto loses badly.

So they aren't aggressive with sweepers or anything and do well in a pico, but I don't buy them losing fights. Here is the aftermath of my big colony of purple wellsis  going up against an even bigger colony of acan echinata, which are obviously notorious (for very, very good reason) for being super aggressive and never losing a fight:

 

The Blasto is a little bigger than my fist with 30 someodd polyps and the echinata I've had for 8 years and is the size of a tea saucer, so again, not two little frags going at each other.

 

[Tired]

That's good to know, I'll keep an eye out to grab one if I can. Maybe I can get lucky when things go on sale for Black Friday. Or, heck- if you ever frag that, what would you want for a piece? 

 

Wow, that's really impressive on the blasto's part. I guess if you provoke them enough, they fight back. I've never heard of them attacking anything, at least. 

 

Too bad echinatas are like that, they're really pretty. But I don't think I'd get one even in a bigger tank, not unless I could put it a good foot away from every other coral. 

[jservedio]

44 minutes ago, Tired said:

That's good to know, I'll keep an eye out to grab one if I can. Maybe I can get lucky when things go on sale for Black Friday. Or, heck- if you ever frag that, what would you want for a piece?  the blasto's part. I guess if you provoke them enough, they fight back. I've never heard of them attacking anything, at least. 

 

Too bad echinatas are like that, they're really pretty. But I don't think I'd get one even in a bigger tank, not unless I could put it a good foot away from every other coral. 

FWIW, echinatas only need a few inches, they are pretty much the same as favias in terms of what you need to watch out for. I've got two bigger colonies in my 20g, that have been in my tank for more than 8 years. They aren't as super-aggressive as people make them out to be, you just have to treat them like any other LPS that can pack a punch. They've both got body counts, but every one was due to my clowns being jerks that knocked an unsecured frag onto them.

 

I want to say I paid $20 for my green micro (just checked, actually in 2013) and it was 8 or 9 teeny polyps. They aren't really expensive for the plain looking ones like mine. Unfortunately, I doubt this thing is ever getting fragged - it's been growing in place for almost 7 years now and is entirely fused onto the rock and the skeletons of the surrounding corals. Unless of course you can see a way this can be fragged. Once I get my new tank, I'd consider just selling the whole rock though as a ready made 12" cube pico-in-a-box!

 

[Tired]

Oh wow, yeah, that doesn't look fraggable. Unless you put some bits of shell around it so it grew onto them, then broke the bits off with the polyps on them? I don't know if that would work very well, though. Or if there's any place to put a shell bit.

At that point, it looks like you pretty much just have a single rock there, with how thoroughly they must be encrusted around it. That's how live rock forms, I guess. 

 

I just had a look at the coral fight club thread. No wonder you have so many contributions, that's just a solid mass of coral there! Looks amazing. What's that larger paly in the lower middle, the one with all the speckles? 

I take it you like greens, blues, and purples. 

[A.m.P]

I've never actually seen a blasto lose a fight, and there are some records of them doing some nasty things to animals dropped on them all over R2R, no reach though thankfully (personal experience, had a small head blasto get knocked over onto a chalice, blasto unscathed, chalice melted). Some also just don't seem to ever sting other animals and can be packed-in on top of other corals, the variation is fascinating.
Also you should absolutely check out @jservedio's thread, it's a fantastic read.

FWIW Favia can be nasty, but certain echinata are known for long-distance mesenterial warfare (Looking at you orange crush) where they roleplay as a pissed-off lobo and straight-up eat a neighbor from a half-foot away, but it seems to be rare nowadays.

[Tired]

Huh, I wonder what I was thinking of, then. That's good to know, I'll be careful nothing falls on my blasto. It's away from the rockwork anyway, I put it on a frag disc so I can have a nice little sandbed colony. Hopefully it doesn't have a run-in with one of my RFAs- I assume they'd have the sense to move away if it stung them. 

Wonder if I could figure out whether this one is an individual likely to be particularly bothered if something snuggles up against it, in any way short of outright testing it. 

 

When I've looked up pictures of coral warfare in the past, to show to people when I'm telling them about it, a lot of the most dramatic pictures seem to feature echinata. The ones with sweeper tentacles the whole length of the colony glommed onto a neighbor and digesting it. Impressively nasty. Will they tolerate each other, at least? 

 

The favia has been put in timeout, in a corner where it's downstream of everything. Once it's a bit less of a baby frag, I'll see if anyone wants to buy or trade for it. It's not really worth the trouble to ship on its own, right now, and I don't have anything else spare aside from a three-polyp clove frag that might be firework cloves.

[A.m.P]

I wouldn't put echinata's next to each other, some have done it successfully, but it feels like a torch garden to me. Great until it isn't.
Most other Acans will grow right on top of each other 99% of the time though, so there's that.

[Tired]

Oh, yeah, definitely going for an acan lord garden. Just ordered a really neat purple/green striped one that I think is going to look nice next to a light blue I already have. 

 

Any idea if micromussa amakusensis gets along with micro lords? Since they're both pretty docile. 

 

Torch garden sounds like a bomb waiting to go off. Just a very pretty bomb. 

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

When I've looked up pictures of coral warfare in the past, to show to people when I'm telling them about it, a lot of the most dramatic pictures seem to feature echinata. The ones with sweeper tentacles the whole length of the colony glommed onto a neighbor and digesting it. Impressively nasty. Will they tolerate each other, at least? 

Yes, assuming they are both actually acan echinatas - they are hard to identify and some chalices look remarkably similar to acan echinatas, especially when they are small. Baby bowerbanki polyps also look like acan echinatas (until they get huge). If you know for a fact they are both echinatas, they are fine together - I've had 4 or 5 together and never once seen an issue. I only have two now and they are separated, but only because there isn't room. When I upgrade, they are going to be neighbors.

3 hours ago, Amphrites said:

Also you should absolutely check out @jservedio's thread, it's a fantastic read.

FWIW Favia can be nasty, but certain echinata are known for long-distance mesenterial warfare (Looking at you orange crush) where they roleplay as a pissed-off lobo and straight-up eat a neighbor from a half-foot away, but it seems to be rare nowadays.

Thank you! Echinatas get a bad rap, but they aren't really any worse than so many other LPS. I think they get the reputation from when both lords and echinatas were "acans" and people would mistakenly buy the wrong one, put it in an "acan" garden and have it wipe out all the lords. Lords get bashed in by literally anything, so it makes echinatas look really mean.

 

Are you just trying to get me to post a picture of my big orange crush echinata 🤣

 

2 hours ago, Amphrites said:

I wouldn't put echinata's next to each other, some have done it successfully, but it feels like a torch garden to me. Great until it isn't.
Most other Acans will grow right on top of each other 99% of the time though, so there's that.

As long as you ID them properly, I've never seen an echinata fight another. The problem is there are so, so many lookalikes, especially frag sized. I've also never once seen lords attack each other nor have I ever heard of it before. And I've had many, many colonies all touching each other over the years - they will attempt to shade each other out like anything else, but never more than that - they all just sort of grow together. Euphyllia are a whole nother animal.

 

2 hours ago, Tired said:

Any idea if micromussa amakusensis gets along with micro lords? Since they're both pretty docile. 

Yes, I've had mine touching for years - I've never seen the micro kill a polyp of the lord, but they will overgrow each other. The way it seemed to work was when they touched each other, the lord would kind of retract like they do when disturbed and just not puff up as much. As the micro continue to grow, the lord would puff up less and less until the micro just started growing right over top. Never an attack though, eventually the lord just gets smothered one polyp at a time. You can actually see it in my picture above - the red lord being slowly smothered (also by the red monti and the palys)

[jservedio]

4 hours ago, Tired said:

Oh wow, yeah, that doesn't look fraggable. Unless you put some bits of shell around it so it grew onto them, then broke the bits off with the polyps on them? I don't know if that would work very well, though. Or if there's any place to put a shell bit.

At that point, it looks like you pretty much just have a single rock there, with how thoroughly they must be encrusted around it. That's how live rock forms, I guess. 

 

I just had a look at the coral fight club thread. No wonder you have so many contributions, that's just a solid mass of coral there! Looks amazing. What's that larger paly in the lower middle, the one with all the speckles? 

I take it you like greens, blues, and purples. 

That picture was a couple months ago so there is even less room now - totally locked in and fused with the rock. No way I'm getting a frag off that!

 

Yeah, my tank is pretty much the logical conclusion of someone who packs out their tank with corals like everyone does and then just doesn't upgrade for a decade. They all start fighting for space and eventually you will be left with a few big colonies after they have conquered the rest - a literal coral thunderdome. I spend far more time fragging stuff that's growing comparatively too fast compared to it's neighbors and attempting to prevent fights than I do with any other normal maintenance.

 

Those palys are stupidly called "Hawaiian Ding Dang" palys and while they usually sell for like $25 or $30 a polyp online, they grow like weeks so people locally can barely give them away, hence me having a higher-end "designer" paly. If you happen to ever be in Raleigh, I'll gladly cut you a polyp or six.

[Tired]

Aw, poor lords, everything bullies them. I wonder how they survive on reefs. Maybe they just grow in sparser areas. They really are wimpy- mine shrinks down halfway if anything bumps it and stays like that for quite awhile. The hermit crabs keep scaring it. 

Good to know they won't fight, means I could set them next to each other. 

 

Re. the palys, I have something I bought as Hawaiian ding dangs (which I like the name of, if only because people make interesting faces when you tell them the name), but they look different. Much smaller, and lighter blue. Do yours look different as new polyps? And do they have solid purple on their stem and the mat between them? I don't have a pic of mine, and they're asleep. This is a pic from the seller's site. 

If these are actually going to grow that big, I'd like to know- I need to move them if they wind up big. 

[A.m.P]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

Aw, poor lords, everything bullies them. I wonder how they survive on reefs. Maybe they just grow in sparser areas. They really are wimpy- mine shrinks down halfway if anything bumps it and stays like that for quite awhile. The hermit crabs keep scaring it. 

Good to know they won't fight, means I could set them next to each other. 

 

Re. the palys, I have something I bought as Hawaiian ding dangs (which I like the name of, if only because people make interesting faces when you tell them the name), but they look different. Much smaller, and lighter blue. Do yours look different as new polyps? And do they have solid purple on their stem and the mat between them? I don't have a pic of mine, and they're asleep. This is a pic from the seller's site. 

If these are actually going to grow that big, I'd like to know- I need to move them if they wind up big. 

It's hard as all get-out to differentiate between paly's and zoas, but that looks like a Zoa, not a paly.  Sphincter muscles, close to the mat, no stem or sand in the mat, small mounded-mouth, stubby tentacles.
Could be wrong for sure though, easy to do with the two lol, the back polyp does kind of look like it has some sand built into a bit of a stem... 
Audible shrug.

[Tired]

Huh. I guess there's two things running around by the same name. That's entirely the opposite of what these names are suppose to be for!

Come to think of it, my "rose nebulas" that don't look like the other online pics of rose nebulas (still pretty, but different patterns) are also from this place, SaltyUnderground. Maybe they've got a few things by the wrong name? 

 

The ones I have don't seem to have any sand integrated into them, though I'm not sure if they've ever had the chance to get any sand. I'll have to wait and see if they grow into something different as they mature. Though it would be very odd for this place to have somehow been able to sell many frags of just baby polyps, unless they take a really long time to grow to maturity. I'm thinkin' they aren't the same as yours. Especially because yours are pretty classic palys. 

[jservedio]

10 hours ago, Tired said:

Huh. I guess there's two things running around by the same name. That's entirely the opposite of what these names are suppose to be for!

Come to think of it, my "rose nebulas" that don't look like the other online pics of rose nebulas (still pretty, but different patterns) are also from this place, SaltyUnderground. Maybe they've got a few things by the wrong name? 

 

The ones I have don't seem to have any sand integrated into them, though I'm not sure if they've ever had the chance to get any sand. I'll have to wait and see if they grow into something different as they mature. Though it would be very odd for this place to have somehow been able to sell many frags of just baby polyps, unless they take a really long time to grow to maturity. I'm thinkin' they aren't the same as yours. Especially because yours are pretty classic palys. 

The only difference on mine between the baby polyps and the full grown polyps is the babies have a much brighter pink that fades to purple as they get bigger. The polyps are huge, between 3/4" and 1" across. This is what they look like up close, including a baby:

[Tired]

Man, those are pretty! Though maybe I don't want a 1"-polyped very pretty weed in my pico tank. I'd run out of room for other things.

[A.m.P]

2 hours ago, Tired said:

Man, those are pretty! Though maybe I don't want a 1"-polyped very pretty weed in my pico tank. I'd run out of room for other things.

And this is why I'd only ever buy legendarily slow growing paly's.

[Tired]

I will say, though, if you ever take down the tank in a way that would involve getting rid of those palys, I'd love if you could message me. I'd probably want to buy a frag of those to keep ahold of, even if they might be a weed. 

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

I will say, though, if you ever take down the tank in a way that would involve getting rid of those palys, I'd love if you could message me. I'd probably want to buy a frag of those to keep ahold of, even if they might be a weed. 

I can frag those palys - I actually have to pull off 4-5 polyps in the next few weeks because they are over growing the mandarins which I like better.

 

Since I sold the big nems, my clowns are using the zoas as a house and the little mandarins get beat up.

[Tired]

Aw, hell. PMing you. I guess I can corral them with anemones or something so they don't go hogwild.