Coral warfare!!

[gem]

I have always known that certain coral need to have some distance between them and other corals. This is something I have been quite careful about. Recently, however, I happen to have alot of my corals down on my sand, due to the fact that I will be redoing my tank in the next month. I plan to drill the tank and add some more LR and at that time, I'll place and glue down corals where I want them. It has gotten increasingly difficult to keep the corals seprate as I obtain frags.
I have also recently added some fish to my tank. I had only one occelaris clown and he posed no issues with coral rearranging. Last Saturday I got a Yellow Mimic tang....who enjoys dislodging my pink panther zoas from their perch. I also got a bonded pair of orange spot diamond gobies. If you aren't familiar with them, they are wonderful for keeping the sand nice and white as they sift it, however, they excavate and tend to bury and move stuff in the process. I have a prizm favia frag...a very nice piece and a bit pricey at that....and recently obtained a green Acan frag as well. These were about 3 - 4 inches apart the other day. Yesterday I came home and they were touching. :ssuprised: well....my prizm favia lost the battle. It's not dead, but definatley burned!!!
so....to those of you who didn't know this....be very aware of what corals don't play well with others!

[kaybee]

Yeah, despite their tranquil appearance, corals can be quite territorial.

They can compete for valuable 'real estate' on the reef either remotely (overshadowing and chemically) or physically (encroachment and stinging).

Here's a euphyllia cristata sweeper tentacle engaging a xenia:
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a259/y2kenny19/Saltwater/sweeper.jpg

[gem]

Wow...great pic. I've never actually seen the stinger out.

[zackish]

Who cares it's only xenia hahha.
I can't stand xenia, I finally have it all removed from my tank. I like to call it the "weed" coral. If you want some simple coral to grow and watch grow fast xenia is your best bet along with other leathers.

[kaybee]

(Dated thread, but I figured I'd go ahead and add to it rather than recreate a new thread with the same title).

Yesterday morning I caught one of my acans in the act of attacking the another. The aggressor was my orange/green probable acan echinata, a 'repeat offender', having already destroyed 2or 3 blastomussa wellsi polyps not too long ago (which were about 3" away from it). This time it attacked my red acan lord which was at least 4" away.

Rather than extending sweeper tentacles, it 'cast' what resembles a micro tan-colored 'net' comprised of stinging filaments. It's apparently able to cast this sticky net fairly far, utilizing water flow to help it extend toward nearby corals.

Interestingly, the filaments were 'spilled out' from some unknown opening orginating from the far side of the acan echinata, rather than from an area closest to its target. The filament net made contact in the area of the arrow head, The opposite end of the line arrrow indicates where the stinging net was spewed from: (photo taken a day or so before the attack)
http://i13.photobucket.com/albums/a259/y2kenny19/Saltwater/acanvsacan.jpg

I'm not sure if the red acan lord is more resistant than the blastomussa, or if I caught the aggression soon after it started but the red acan wasn't damaged much. It's not as expanded as before and hasn't yet extended its feeder tentacles (as the unaffected polyps have), but it's not a mass of disintegrating mucus that the orange/green acan rendered the blasto polyps into.

I've got to keep my eye on that a. echinata. I increased the distance between them to 5" which is all I'm able to do. I wonder if it was actually trying to 'get' the dark acans at the far left, which were recently added, since the two corals in question had been in proximity for a while with no prior issues between them.

[gem]

Wow.....yeah....Acans can play nasty can't they. My acan got my prism favia a second time and successfully melted the entire favia. I now keep them on opposite sides of the tank. I have a few different acan species in somewhat close proximity currently and haven't had a problem yet. I never knew they would attack each other. As for your "attacked acan"...they seem to bounce back well....if it wasn't totally melted...I would imagine it will get happy again. As for the Welsii....well...they're quite sensitive actually....so I would suspect they would handle an attack well at all. good luck! = )

[kaybee]

I think same-type acans get along fine, for example the one at the left and the one in the center have no issues at all. But perhaps that because the acan which got attacked was also an acan (albeit a different species) may explain why it didn't suffer any apparent damage. It looked unhappy for a day or two but that was about it.