Basic Coral Care

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The Art of Raising Corals

Your grow-out tanks will typically hold a lot more coral than this!

This photo will have to do for now, but I hope to get a clear shot of a fully-stocked grow-out basin.

Care and Maintenance

Your coral frags require five basic things to grow:
Good Saltwater Quality
Good Saltwater Circulation
Proper Nutrition
Stable Anchorage
Protection from Encroachment/Damage

Water is kept "clean" of organic pollutants by the protein skimmer and by the bacteria and algae in and on the live rock and tank surfaces.
Proper saltwater here means saltwater of the right physical properties like specific gravity, temperature, and chemical composition. As evaporation reduces the freshwater content, you will have to replenish it. If temperatures get too hot, you'll need to provide some insulation or reduce the strength of sunlight entering the basins with screens or netting. Coral growth uses up calcium and other minerals dissolved in the water. These will have to be replenished with regular additions of dissolved calcium and if you wish, so-called "trace element solutions"
Circulation is provided by the return powerhead.

Proper nutrition for hermatypic corals means adequate lighting to allow symbiotic 'zooxanthellae' (photosynthetic dinoflagellates) in them to produce starches and sugars for the coral. Thus you need to check against obstructions to light, whether they be dust, fallen leaves, pizza crusts or whatnot. Larger-polyped corals can be fed. This is very important with ahermatypic corals, which host no symbiotic algae. Anyway, this website focuses on small-polyped branching corals.

You've already provided stable anchorage by mounting the frag onto its base. But you should still refrain from frequently relocating the mounted frag. You will protect the mounted frags from neighboring coral (particularly coral of a different species). Corals can and will wage war on another to compete for space. You will also ensure that algal growth does not choke coral access to sunlight and anchoring substrate. Herbivores like the small Diadema sp. urchin pictured above are a great help... while they're small.

Hitchhiking creatures in the live rock can also find their way into the basins and cause harm to your coral. Small anemones of the genus Aiptasia are hardy little pests that spread like crazy and can sting corals. Interestingly, Diadema urchins can eat them along with the algae.

Protein skimmers need to have clean columns in order to work properly. Airstones need to be replaced once the bubbles they produce are no longer fine in size. The airpump's diaphragm may need replacing once a year.
When venturi powerheads are used instead of airstones, their maintenance runs parallel to that of the return powerhead. The chamber within which the impeller spins must be cleaned about once every two months. The impeller itself needs similar cleaning.
The table will need checking for any signs of dry or wet rot. Rubber 'feet' or pads under the legs is a good way to keep the wood from soaking in any spill. Plastic sheeting as a 'tablecloth' under the basins is another.

Observe your corals regularly!
No other regular chore will help you more in spotting and averting problems.

Culling Coral

You will need to give a little coral away within a year and a half of setting up, if you've done everything right and have chosen branching corals similar to those described in this discussion.
You should always leave 'parent colonies' -mounted specimens of sufficient size and branchiness as to be a good source of future frags. Fragmenting is often necessary to save a colony. Branching coral can outgrow its base, and branches left alone for too long can become too robust to frag easily.

I have found that regularly harvesting branches from a horizontally-mounted 'parent' is not only sustainable, but keeps the 'parent' from growing too big and taking up too much space.

Don't get the wrong idea: my parent colonies are SMALL, as in: less than fist size. Given the species of coral involved and the size of the grow-out basins, I feel that limiting them to that size makes for a situation that remains controllable.