Hard corals with Softies

[cdemeritt]

Ok, probably an easy one, but.. gotta ask anyways.

I know most people try to keep "soft only" or "hard only" tanks. I like the look of most of the soft corals, especially the leathers, zoas, and 'shrooms, and they seem to be a lot less fussy about water quality. Lately I've been thinking, I'd like to give stonies (preferably SPS) another shot. I've been reading a lot lately about the chemical warfare between "softies" and "stonies", but still having some difficulty putting it all together. So with good skimming, and the use of carbon, is it possible to mix the two? are there speicies of stonies that can work with softies? Any I should absolutely avoid? Or should I just pass on the whole idea, and just go with the softies that I like (I know I can still have a beautiful tank with softies.), and plan for a second tank for Stonies?

Thanks,
Chris

[betamed]

I have shrooms, colt, devils hand leather, finger leather, zoas, cloves, and buttons with a hammer and candy canes. No SPS for me, but I think good skimming and carbon go a long way to reduce any problems. From what I understand its the leathers that emit toxins and the hard corals that can sting the soft ones.

[tims]

you are correct with the thinking that the soft corals use chemical warfare to gain growing room, but the LPS and SPS can also have a sweeper arm or feeders ( usally only the LPS).
one of the best ways to do things like adding SPS to tanks is to re do the whole thing and add the SPS first then the soft corals down the line.
make sue you give plenty of growth room for each coral type too.
running the carbon is going to help, but you must make sure you change that often enough.

[Reefyone]

Depends on coral, IMHE.
Candycanes, hammers and frogspawn had no problem with white xenia, gsp, hairy mushroom and plain red mushrooms, non-photosynthetic softies, in a tank with no skimmer and rarely carbon. SPS porires, elkhorn and birdsnest did well togeter with them too, same conditions, plus additional yellow polyps, blastomussa merletti and lobophillia - trouble free.

On the other side, the large single open brain type corals - scolymia, cynarina and Symphyllia valenciennesi - did much better in a separate container.
And more of this, my cynarina doesn't like to have scolymia in proximity, especially upflow - and both are LPS.

I don't appreciate hammers, drogspawn and the candycanes with massive skeleton - they have a long enough sweeping tentacles, to place the neigbours in danger.

GARF is using xenia bed as a refugium for the nutrients export for their sps tank, with protein skimmer, though.

[ChilisREasy]

i am experimenting my tank with raising SPS along with my soft & LPS,all SPS will be medium light corals,ill let ya know how it turns out.so far my LPS has been doing perfect along with my Softies.

[Casey]

Run carbon and do good water changes on time and dont get behind on them,good skimming is always important.