Mixed Reef

I was at the LFS yesterday and the guy I was talking to said that a mixed reef is a bad idea. I have a few leathers, a few LPS, and a few SPS. He said that if I wanted to do montipora, stylophora, seriatopora, or most other SPS it would probably be okay, but only for a while if I had leather as long as I had good flow and ran carbon, but if I wanted to do acropora I needed to get rid of all my leathers. Experiences, comments on mixed reefs?

 

This guy has a massive leather in his tank and keeps plenty of acros, and has for years. I believe running a good amount of carbon should take care of it. It's definitely possible, just a little riskier IMO.

Melevsreef.com - Welcome!

 

Anyone else? I ultimately would like to keep maybe 2 leathers in a 90 with acropora. Has anyone done this for extended periods of time?

 

I have had acro's, digi, monti, poci, LPS, softies, a few leathers, etc all in my tank (started in the 40 now moved to the 200) for a while now. Probably close to 6 months, and not had issues. I do run carbon 24/7.

 

I'm thinking if I keep the leathers to a minimum and as far away as possible from the acros maybe I can keep some basic ones.

 

Anyone else have mixed reef experience?

 

Pssh...We have softies and sps everywhere. We don't have a leather though. However, I am naive on this subject. What's potentially so bad about mixing a leather with acros? We have acros, birdsnest, GSP, tons of zoas, tons of shrooms (ricordia and other), dendro, hammer coral, orange tree sponge, acans, and favia. No trouble what so ever. Since everyone else is throwing this in, we do run carbon 24/7 as the water literally "falls" into our fuge. The water falls on/through a bag full of carbon, then over the rocks into our fuge/sump. We change the carbon ever 2 or 3 months.

Can someone update me on why mixing reefs is potentially a bad thing? No one's ever told me that before.

 

Jwin-The potential risk of a mixed reef, or so I've been told-Is that Leather Corals secrete toxins to dominate their environment. These toxins are not generally naturally in SPS's environments, so they can kill the SPS corals.

 

I agree... the only issue i can see would be softies taking everything over... My tank is dominated by a bunch of sps and then a few giant softies...

MIXED REEFS FOREVER!

 

My guess is that any minimal amounts of toxin would be neutralized through carbon or other filtration. And in a larger tank, they might be so diluted in the system, that they have no lasting effects on other corals?

Our only problem child as far as corals go is our favia frag. He's in timeout away from all the other corals, because his blasted sweeper tentacles don't play nice. Bleached out a chunk of one of our acros (which has recovered), and it's now sandwiched between rocks in the middle of our rock work.