Softies with SPS

Think I know the answer to this question but figured I would ask.

I am thinking about adding an ORA Red Planet Acro to my tank. My xenia, polyp, ricordia, hammer, frogspawn, stylophora, and monti are all doing great. I know Acros are a much harder coral to care for but was wondering if the ORA Red Planet would be considered relatively easier since it comes from aquacultures stock and it seems many people have success with them.

Also The spot I want to place the coral is kind of on xenia and jasmine polyp island. A large boulder in my tank that has jasmien polyp growing up the back and xenia on the front/left side. I was hopign to place the ORA kind of in between the two where it would table out and shade some of the softies. Would the xenia smother the sps like zoas do?? Or as long as I trim it back to keep it from shading the Acro would I be ok??

 

Some people have issues with SPS together with softies, others don't. Keeping them from smothering the acro may be tough. Also, there are other subtle, less obvious, but very important issues. For one, that the acro will probably need a lot more flow and light than the softies. Acros like lots of light, but then, they need to "breath" more, which means that they need more flow for gas exchange. If you crank up the flow enough, to accommodate the light, you may kill or stress your softies. If you don't you may do so to the acro.

Then there is nutrients. The acro probably won't like higher nutrients, appreciated by some of the softies. So, nutrients up = softies do well, acros, not so much, nutrients low= vise versa.

So. the moral of the story is, you can have an environment where some corals are happy and others aren't, or you can find a middle ground, where no corals are happy, but not as unhappy as they could be in an environment were some were happy...

Stressed corals are week and susceptible to disease. In such an environment, this will occur more often. So, maybe well look for all sorts of explanations and ignore the obvious (i.e. chemical warfare! ;D).

In the end though, easier to keep separate, but can be done (at least for a short time).

 

I understood the lighting and flow differences but have seen tanks with softies, leathers, sps etc before. I only have a dual bulb T5HO on the aquarium right now anyhow which allows my stylphora to grow nicely but am unsure if an acro would be sustainable long term under that light.

 

I have SPS, LPS, softies and not an NPS. I keep the soft corals on or on the bottom (less flow, less light) and the SPS on the top (more flow, more light).

My LPS and SPS are doing well (by well, I mean growing), my soft corals are not (by well, I mean not growing- they look fine). m2434 may have highlighted why that is.