Blastomussa Coral! The Most UNDERRATED LPS?

What's going on reefers? Blaine here. In today's video, we are back in the farm talking about another coral spotlight series. The coral we're going to focus on in today's episode is going to be Blasto Musas. We're excited about talking about this coral, talking about the different varieties, how you can keep them in your reef tank at home, and what mistakes to avoid. Let's dive in. [music] Blasamusa or blastos are large polip stony corals found throughout the Indo-Pacific region. They're naturally found in deeper and more protected areas of the reef where lighting is lower and water movement is relatively gentle. And that tells us quite a bit about how we should be keeping them in our aquariums. Underneath those big fleshy polyps is a hard calcium carbonate skeleton [music] with individual heads growing together to eventually create a colony. Two names that are commonly heard about when talking about blastos is blasamusa welsai and blasamusa merleti. The easiest difference to spot is the polip size. Wellsai type blastos produce those larger round extremely fleshy polyps. Merletes have much smaller individual polyps and a [music] much more obvious branching or tubular skeletal structure. Now, are blastos easy? Generally, yes. Blastos are a great entry point for people looking to get into LPS [music] corals because they're fairly forgiving as long as you understand one thing. They don't like the extreme conditions. They don't need extreme lighting. They don't need extreme flow. And they don't need ultra low nutrient water. What they really want is stability. As an LPS coral, they're still building a hard skeleton. So, calcium, alkalinity, those parameters are going to be major reasons on how this coral can stay consistent and [music] stay healthy. But don't get caught up chasing perfect numbers because again, like we've talked about before, stability is most important. Lighting is probably one of the biggest things people get the misconception about with blastos. [music] These are low to moderate light corals. Here at TopShelf, we generally recommend somewhere around 50 to 150 PAR. You don't need to place them at the top of the aquascape underneath your strongest light. In fact, blastos make great additions in lower light areas where some corals may struggle. We generally like to start them lower in the aquarium, slowly acclimate them, and if we want to continue to move them, we can get them into stronger light as they acclimate to the aquarium. When it comes to flow, the same idea applies. Blastos [music] prefer low to moderate indirect flow. And you want to ensure that you keep debris away from settling around the colony to help carry food and waste away with that indirect flow. But you should make sure that you're not giving extreme violent flow and the flesh is getting pushed around against the skeleton all day. Remember how much soft tissue is sitting around that hard skeleton. And if flow is constantly smashing the flesh against the skeleton, there could be irritation or potentially tissue damage in the long run. When it comes to the placement, we like to see them in the lower sections of the reef, maybe sometimes in the sand bed as well on small rubble rock, but we see them to be best kept around or away from corals with about 3 in or so of space. We don't see them as the most aggressive LPS corals, but again, they can still sting. And more importantly, they can also lose badly when placed against or near something significantly more aggressive. So don't be placing a blasto next to a galaxia colony, a euphilia colony, or something of that sort with great sweepers at night. Where blastos really shine when it comes to the excitement of the coral is the feeding. You don't have to constantly feed them to keep them alive because they're also photosynthetic, but they're also very capable feeders and put on quite the show. If you're trying to grow out a blasto colony, supplemental feeding of some pieces of micus, enriched brine shrimp, finely chopped up foods, zup plankton, and much more can be a great addition to their feeding schedule. Here at Topshelf, we generally recommend to target feed your blastos around once, maybe twice a week, depending on the size of the colony. When it comes to how fast blastos grow, they're not going to spread across your aquarium overnight, and the growth tends to be on the slower to moderate area. The new heads are going to form around the existing colony and gradually fill in. When it comes to fragging, this is one of the advantages again of blastos because they're growing individual heads. So, [music] you can separate them relatively easily once the colony begins to establish more underneath that skeleton. You can cut away and get those individual heads which can then create their own colony in the long run. One main thing to watch out for when it comes to blastos and a big warning sign is tissue recession. If you see any tissue pulling away from the skeleton, this is a big sign that you may have issues with your blasto. Potentially unstable water chemistry, excessive light, excessive flow, physical damage, coral aggression, or other stressors could be the contributing factors. [music] Try to catch this early. A small problem affecting one area of the colony is much easier to deal with rather than multiple heads receding at the same time in the long run. So why choose a blasto with torches, hammers, a cans, all these other LPS that are available? Why choose blastos? For us, it's the combination. You get fleshy polyps, incredible coloration, relatively easy to keep in a hearty coral that doesn't require much and a great feeding response. All while this is a coral that's not going to take over your aquacape. They're also perfect for filling those lower portions of the reef tank where you might not be able to stick those higher light needing corals. And once you grow a blasto from a couple heads into a large colony, this can be something incredibly impressive and extremely rewarding in the long run. [music] Blastos might not get all the love when it comes to LPS in general, but we thought this was an important episode to share here on the TopShelf Aquatics channel. If you feel like there's any coral species or coral in general you want to hear us talking about, feel free drop them down in the comments below. If you guys have tuned in all the way till the end, I want to say thank you very much. Be sure to like, subscribe, and hit the bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads. [music]