Leathers with SPS?

[VA_Reefer]

I'm seeing a few articles around the net indicating that leather corals are toxic to SPS.

 

Can anyone confirm this with experience?

 

I recently added a Devils Hand and want to make sure I'm not poisoning my few SPS pieces.

 

Thanks,

 

greg

[Boret]

Mine isn't poisoning anything, but it definitely wins the battle for space.

[ctenophore]

I've not seen any problems either. I imagine if you cut it in-tank, and the juice goes right onto a sps colony, you might see some issues but other than that, the whole allelopathy thing is overblown IMO. In a very small tank with large corals you might see more problems, but I had a 12" green polyp toadstool in a 29g with a bunch of sps for about a year and didn't have trouble.

[mogurnda]

I have kept them together for years. Even had a toadstool melt down in a tank with SPS without problems. I agree with Justin that the allelopathy thing is way overemphasized.

[davelin315]

I don't agree based on my own experiences. I think that these corals do emit enough to cause problems but that if you have enough filtration on the tank, it can negate a lot of it. I had a tank before with a lot of different kinds of leather corals and soft corals and as they got bigger they started to do battle with each other. Once one began to establish dominance (a colt coral that grew to take over 1/3 of my 125, and I'm talking literally 1/3 of the tank, top to bottom, side to side, front to back) and the other leathers shrunk down in response to the stuff being emitted, the sps all bit the dust, despite routine water changes and lots of other things. Just based on my own experiences, the regular battles are not much to worry about, but when they really start to go at it and one gets dominant, that's when you have to worry.

 

That said, I don't think you'll have any regrets other than having soft corals in your tank (that's my sps bias for you!).