# Corals



## villanueva (Feb 2, 2008)

Help please,
for corals to actually grow onto the live rock, must it be making physical contact with the rock?

thanks a lot.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

It really depends on the coral. LPS (large polyp stony) skeletal growth generally do not fuse to adjacent rock but grow upwards and outwards. A good example would be hammer and bubble corals. SPS (small polyp stony) as they grow will lay out a "creeping" skeleton which will fuse to adjacent surfaces, even the aquarium walls. Typical example would be acropora. Soft corals, like leathers, mushrooms and button polyps, do not have a skeleton to which to grow from. Think of them like blobs that are adhered to the rock that they are on. As time goes on they will get bigger and eventually split. They will move away from each other, sticking to whatever surfaces that they find and become their own separate entity and so on.

Doesn't quite answer your Q but you get the general idea . For the corals that spread onto adjacent rocks, a trick to keep them contained, per se, is to put smaller pieces of rock around the colony. As they spread, you can relocate or trade the "frag" with others. This way it minimizes the encroachment to other unlike corals and prevent a fight for space.

HTH


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