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My scroll Turbinarias don't sweep or hurt anything. Big T. peltatas can kick off some lethal slime, which someone posted killed an Acro and I experienced a slough that caught on a gorg and burned the flesh off the stick in a matter of hours. Bye bye Turb. Pavona desucata (sp, the heavier stuff) puts out sweepers but doesn't seem to damage anything. I haven't seen my Pavona cactus(potatochip) do anything.
Softies, specifically leathers: I have 6 different Sinularias, a Lobo, 4 Sarcos, two Neptheas, and fuzzy(un ID able leather, I should post a pic because it is ancient and I have never seen anything remotely close to it in all these years) which could be made into flower arrangements packed tight and they don't give a rip. I have never seen gorgs kill each other any other way than overgrowing each other(including Briarium, GSP's, clavularia, and Erythropodium. <-all encrusting gorgs in my book )
Capnella is the oddball. It burns other leathers and gorgs and Montis so I kind of clump them in with the other lightweight b@d@sses like yellow polyps and Aiptasia. Heck, it may be the only thing I have that hurts zoos. Zoos don't even hurt my Montis and IMO, they are about the only really compatable softie with stoney corals.
Even though everything burns Xenia, Xenia can overgrow anything (except Hydnophora WOW! what a display of warfare as Xenias dissolve like smoke when the Hydno finally has had enough encroachment and burns it all off)
IMO, the most insidious coral is encrusting gorgonians. They can put down mat, but keep the polyps retracted so it doesn't get burned as it overgrows whatever. Further away, the polyps are out collecting food/energy for the battle front. I will have to put corky fingers(Briarium) vs Hydnophora someday to see if even the Hydno goes under.
My SPS don't like Caulerpa, but my softies and most of my LPS couldn't care less even if being choked by the stuff.
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It could be the filaments. When I had my mini-crash last August(killed a couple Acro frags and a couple Montis and screwed up a lot of other things including my Goni) there were a couple of days when the Acros looked really stringy(and I was changing water bigtime because my system was sick) and those things ended up all over the tank. I had to knock them off the other non Acro animals with the baster because I didn't want to chance it. The Turbinaria just slimes all over, more like a big leather. So the toxic spewage could be from several sources that I have seen.
On the other hand, my Acros spew stuff all day and it looks like someone barfed in my SPS tank by 7pm. The floating spooge is sick. I don't think that stuff is toxic , but rather overproduction of sugars and proteins from roasting in the sun all afternoon (500w of Iwasaki and 200w of Actinic on a 55 long) There is a constant stream of rising bubbles across the whole tank(it is 90% solid Acro frags pretty much)
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It could be the filaments
The digestive filaments are little stringy things that are not tentacles and I guess come out of their mouth. The Acro filaments look like a tiny piece of thread or several. They put them out when stressed and normally you will not see them
These are the Acontia/Actontium/ MesenteriFl filaments (gut) and they all have them to include Anemones. They are an extension of the middle ridge of the sepal filament, at the base of the coral/anemone. They also discharge numerous detachable darts (formed from micobasic p-masstigophore nematocysts) and are important defense mechanisms. One of the reasons behind this is that they don't want to anchor the prey (themselves) to the predator. All of these neurotoxins in cnida's are either protein or peptide based. These structure are also important in taxonomy (ID'ing)
On the other hand, my Acros spew stuff all day and it looks like someone barfed in my SPS tank by 7pm. The floating spooge is sick. I don't think that stuff is toxic , but rather overproduction of sugars and proteins
Yes, it is just good old waste
One of my rare books has a whole chapter just on Coral Competiton Even the mucous in some corals is toxic
Boomer |