do you guys keep corel in your tanks at all? i seen on tv that they grow 1" per year and i was wondering if they can be keept alive in home tanks.

Glad you brought that up Vip.

That is not neccessarily true although that statement could be. In a poorly set up SPS tank or depending upon the coral in question, that could be the case.

A platygyra Brain will rarely grow more than a 1/4 inch a year under excellent conditions.

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On the other had here are two pics of a Montipora Capicornus. The first pic is a frag thats about the size as a Siver Dollar. The second pic is about 8 months later and is about 8" across!

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As you can see from those last two pics growth of SPS coprals can be extremely rapid and depending on the coral painfully slow. It varies on the coral being kept anf the conditions under which it is kept. Lighting, water flow conditions and available nutreints will all play a major roll more times than not.

Before much longer I hope to do a species profile on several hundred fish and close to that in corals! Of course Rome wasnt built in a day and neither will this project, but I am chippin' away....

One of the biggest hold ups has been a source for sharp close up pics. I have located a source for many thanks to MDM Aquatics permission to download and show case some of thier Copy Writed pics from thier website. I am still working this issue with Barry at Clams Direct and a couple of others.

whoa thats a cool looking corel! i seen on that just looked like on a tv doc the other day

That Monitpora Cap is probably one of the easiest and least demanding SPS corals to do. They will even do good under VHO or PC 10k bulbs. In halides though they will truely show their stuff in a major kinda way. In a year even a newbie coulod grow one of these out into a nice center piece for thier reef tank.

The come in Green, Orange-Rust, or Purple. Some will have a colored rim too like the Leng Sy Montipora Cap which is Green with White then Purple rim. Its a striking coral and a collector grade coral as quater (.25 cent US$) sized frags are going for 100.00 each when available!

I have stumbled into a "hot pink" colored one thats so bright youd swear it used batteries to light up. It ought to be a real "Crown Jewel" of a coral in a year or so. You can bet I will be fragging that baby and sharing it with the local reefers here!!!

That is very true Rit. And another thing that envolves greatly on how fast and much a coral can grow is what kinda of conditions it is in like one thing Rit. brought up lighting is very important i'm running power compacts in my tank. But they also need to be in very pristine water. What popular saying in this hobby is ARE YOUR FISH THRIVING OR SURVIVING. But I guess I came in to late because Rit. pretty much took care of it. Another thing yes corals can very pretty easily be kept in the home aquarium under proper conditions about 20 years ago that was unheard of.

You better bbe fragging it because I want one :D