Which is better a bought reef or.....

[Troy Valentine]

aquarium 074.jpgP5062545.jpg

This leads to another question and I hope the OP does not mind. If you are like me and have lots of small frags to grow out. Do you do crowd control by trimming back corals or do you let nature take its course and let stuff just grow in together?

This can be dangerous to your reef, especially with SPS corals. It all started off with 3 harmless thumbnail sized frags on top of my live rock shelf, and in 4 years this is what can happen.

[Europhyllia]

Do you do crowd control by trimming back corals or do you let nature take its course and let stuff just grow in together?
Thoughts?

I am going to combine my answer with what Allan posted about how nature tends to repeat itself rather than have a willy nilly mix of all kinds of different bits. Kind of like a field of wild flowers. You see the same ones repeatedly. And that's what makes it believable for me -natural looking.
I had a Large Polyp Gorgo that had grown really well get eaten up by a purple gorgo that touched it. So I cut off the tip, cut out the injured part and placed the new frag somewhere else.
Or a Knobby Searod just getting too long and looking goofy -cut it into 3 pieces and place those in a little group.
Gorgos and macro can put out stuff that's harsh on other corals so the gorgos are usually the winners.
With gorgos getting so tall and exiting the water they either need to be moved or frag-trimmed. And yes, I do that. But now that I have multiples of stuff it makes it even better looking in my opinion - more natural.
Just like Allan's diving observation.
My goal is to replicate a natural reef though. Others may see their tank more as a showcase of different corals than anything replicating nature.

[Europhyllia]

Troy what a cute idea with the clam tray!!!

[allan]

I have a gorgo that is about 20", and I always cringe when it falls over on something else because it is definitely the dominate creature.

Rrasco, exactly... Only I cringed when I saw that diver so close. Was that you?

I happened onto a few frags a couple years ago and seriously overlooked how much growth I would get. As a result I've found myself breaking apart rock to keep them apart.

I've got a purple Formosa that will lose a couple branches here soon as it's about to grow into a colony of valida.

I really admire those specific tanks that recreate the natural area from which they came.

But I prefer to cultivate a garden that I find interesting and colorful. So I put in there stuff that looks interesting.

[Regric25]

aquarium 074.jpgP5062545.jpg

This can be dangerous to your reef, especially with SPS corals. It all started off with 3 harmless thumbnail sized frags on top of my live rock shelf, and in 4 years this is what can happen.

I am not keeping SPS its just LPS and softies. To me that second pic looks cool! Maybe a little tall but still looks cool. I bet its even cooler from the top down.

[Troy Valentine]

It was a real pain to me due to the flow and light restriction it caused. I should have pruned along the way to prevent this from happening. I can only imagine what would happen if left unchecked for 10 years, you would be able to create your own live rock, and reef base rock.

[Regric25]

WOW! That is HUGE! You are right that is not a good idea. So what I am pretty much doing is not a good idea for all corals. So did you grow that from a small frag?

[350gt]

Lol that pic is crazy......

[BSJF]

I like some mature pieces so I have something to watch, but I love seeing a little tiny frag grow up. Sometimes I sell the larger colony later and keep a small frag rather than just selling the frag so I can watch it grow.

When we moved to Texas, I wanted to bring all the SPS I had grown out with me, but the colonies died (my fault entirely). Only my frags survived. I was sad then, but I got to watch them grow up all over again into even larger colonies.

And I'm with Ace about watching your own baby fishies grow up. That is funner than anything.

[rrasco]

Rrasco, exactly... Only I cringed when I saw that diver so close. Was that you?

No, not me. I don't dive. In fact, I'm terrified of the ocean and almost everything in it.