Frogfish Friend

 Hi Friends! Today I am going over how we categorize coral in the hobby. The three main groups we use are: 1. SPS (Small polyp stony coral) 2. LPS (Large polyp stony coral)  3. Softy   I will go over each of these categories in their own posts for more specific care and details. Things change often in the hobby and one of the more typical changes is how a coral is named and classified. These are not hard rules. Instead it is a tool to assist people in the hobby. SPS coral are what a lot of people imagine when they think about a coral reef. It is typically seen as a "reef builder" and it makes up a lot of the structure on the reef. The small polyps sit over a calcium carbonate skeleton. As the polyps stretch and expand towards the light they secrete the materials to grow their skeleton and tissue. Here are two examples close up. Below is a green Acro with small polyps. Above is a red Monti.   Typically the calcium carbonate skeleton grows first, followed closely by the tissue

Hi friends!  Today we will look at something a little different. The ugly side of my tanks! Normally I give my tanks a grace period of 1-6 months before I post them for the world to see. This gives it time to break out of the ugly phase after it has been cycled. (On that note, I always start with already cycled live rock to help the process) The first picture above is when the tank was roughly one month old. It has a standard white led light and a sponge filter. I had no vision of where the tank would go. I stuck with mostly LPS (long polyp stony coral) in this tank. It is considered a mixed reef because there are a few different softies and SPS. But the majority of the tank is LPS. This second picture is roughly around month 4-5. As you can see I added a lot of critters to the tank. Mostly the two clownfish and the anemone. In month 2 the green zoas began to grow off of the plug onto the rock. Once this happens growth becomes exponential as it has a lot of surface area to spread. The