A respected New York entrepreneur, Jonah Engler Silberman has helped lead and grow multimillion-dollar retail ventures. Passionate about plants, Jonah Engler Silberman and his wife have arranged abundant greenery throughout their home and maintain a number of fish tanks, including a coral reef tank.
When selecting corals with which to stock a tank, one key consideration is whether to use hard or soft corals, with both types having a rigid calcium carbonate (limestone) composition. The hard type has an internal skeleton in place that remains rigid and set, even after the coral polyps die. Hard corals grow very slowly and they take their colors from algae that live on them symbiotically.
Lacking an exoskeleton, soft corals contain proteins that combine with the rigid calcium carbonate to create a degree of flexibility that hard corals lack. More tolerant to a variety of water conditions, including low light, soft corals seem to sway in the water and are much easier to take care of than their harder counterparts.
