Galaxea, Stingers, and a pair of Scissors

[ChuKronos]

My Galaxea is an awesome coral. Just recently, over the last three weeks, he has started growing. It has gone from about 3/4" to 1"+ diameter. This is odd to me because of something I started doing about 4 weeks ago.

4 weeks ago, I came home from work to see the stingers of the Galaxea dancing in the current. Watching the stingers sway back and forth is something I love to do. This particular time I noticed an exceptionally long stinger extending 6-7" from my 1" galaxea. As I watched the stinger I saw it narrowly miss two colonies of zoos and then sway the other direction and barely missed my monti. My heart jumped! I quickly ran and grabbed a pair of stainless steel scissors, dunked them in the tank and quickly cut off the long stinger. The galaxea didn't even budge. It didn't seem to care that the stinger was missing. I netted the exorcised stinger and removed it from the tank. What was remaining of the stinger was still flowing in the current along with the shorter ones. The galaxea was seemingly unaffected.

I have since cut off two other long stingers and have noticed that the galaxea has grown. There aren't any super long stingers at the moment. I wonder if the growth is because the long stingers were cut off and the galaxea is growing to get bigger to be more aggressive and protect itself, or if the sudden growth just natural growth.

Regardless, I am sure I will get some people that will be upset with me for cutting off a few stingers. But, I figured there seems to be no problem cutting off a whole section of the coral to propagate, so a few stingers shouldn't have a negative effect...and it didn't.

So, if you have a galaxea and it's stingers are dangerously close to your other corals, you should be able to cut the really long ones off without ill effects. And still be able to enjoy an amazing coral.

-Chuck

 

[koga57]

this will not hurt the galaxea. i have seen multiple LFS owners reach in and just pull the long strands off.

koga57
david

 

[tesfeld]

You won't be getting much sleep then. You should see it at night. You won't be able to keep up with it in the long run. Every little dot on the coral is capable of extending that far I believe. Not all at once, but they all can. Position it somewhere in the flow that will always carry its tentacles to an area where it won't hurt anything. I had mine near the overflow and they'd get sucked toward it without touching anything else. Work smarter, not harder.

 

[Carabelli]

tony is right - this coral is beautiful, but, most people don't realize how aggressive and potentially lethal they can be - those stingers go a long ways, so, if you can't find a good spot for him, i might recommend you trade him for another coral - a torch or frogspawn might be a good choice - just my experience.