baby corals growing in your tank?

[jhale]

I've had a few corals start to grow out of nowhere, I was wondering how many of you have raised a little speck of coral to a full grown colony. I think that is the ultimate in coral keeping

So far I have three little ones, a pocilipora, I know that ones easy. One I think is a green montipora digita?. And the coolest one is a green horida?, I think. This last one is actually at the stage where it's branching. It looks like a mini colony.

Actually looking around my tank I now see five more little specs with polyps, they are brown, so I'm thinking more pocilipora. maybe they will be ready for the 2007 frag swap

 

[nanoreefer22]

The best I've seen in my tank were Orange Zoo's that I have on the other side of the tank pop up about 6inches from the main colony. Thats now turned in 4 polyps...3 in a little cluster and one lone polyp about 1 inch away from those 3. I was happy to see that cause these Zoo's are nice... Wonder if torts could do that!?

 

[jhale]

ha! that's what I was thinking Kris, why couldn't torts reproduce as easily as the pocilipora? I looked again, there are baby pociliporas all over the tank I guess it could be worse.

 

[marrone]

I have had corals all of a sudden just start to grow out of rocks months after the rock was placed into the tank. Most of the corals have been the polyp type some have also been sponges.

It seems they're just waiting for the right condition to spring and start growing.

 

[jhale]

back when I had my 55 folr tank I ordered some extra rock from Live Aquaria. after a little while a brain coral started to grow, it got to about a 1/2" then something happened and it died
my tank was not set up for coral back then, I wish I could have kept it growing.

 

[scotty]

i have frogspawn polops drop off and start pretty often

 

[ShaunW]

Does xenia count?

 

[jhale]

no xenia does not count.

maybe back in the 80's that would have been cool.
these days nothing short of an SPS growing from nowhere will impress me.

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by jhale:
no xenia does not count.

maybe back in the 80's that would have been cool.
these days nothing short of an SPS growing from nowhere will impress me.

Your starting to sound like Rich, .

 

[ShaunW]

Next you'll be calling zoanthids, colorful aiptasia also, LOL!

[ July 14, 2005, 03:30 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[jhale]

uh oh,
there can be only one SPS pimp, I'll let him wear that title.

corals that grow off of, or fall off their parents are easy to grow these days. I like being surprised by a coral popping up unexpected. Like Kris said I wish my Blue tort i got from Jim would do this. It's growing well, but I don't see it replicating itself

 

[ShaunW]

Maybe you could be:
SPS Pimp, Jr.

or just

Jr.

 

[ShaunW]

I think that all SPS have this ability, and it may have to do with water quality and energy uptake.

If a tort every got to the size that it's energy intake (photosynthesis surface area) enabled it to grow faster than it does as a frag, I would think that it would behave the same way as a pocilipora. Captive torts just get fragged too often, to allow it to happen.

 

[jhale]

it could take years then for them to reach that reproductive size.

maybe I'll let my one little frag grow and see what happens...

 

[ShaunW]

Originally posted by jhale:
it could take years then for them to reach that reproductive size.

maybe I'll let my one little frag grow and see what happens...

If you notice, there is one common feature that all the RC tanks of the month have, and it would be to not frag their corals. Thus their SPS growth is mature, similar to wild type growth.

Take this months tank . He obviously didn't frag at all for the last couple of years (look at his growth pictures). Under these conditions, reproduction and clonal propagation would be less stressful to the mother colony and therefore more common for the slower growing (initally) acropora's.

[ July 14, 2005, 04:21 PM: Message edited by: solbby ]

 

[spykes]

does that mean fragging will start warping the coral from it's natural form?

 

[ShaunW]

Everytime you remove a piece of coral (frag) from a mother colony you are stimulating a stress response, causing the corals energy to be directed towards healing, and away from reproduction. You are also removing some of the photosythetic surface area of the coral, so the overall ability of the SPS to generate energy will be lessened. This will limit, in this case, unnessesary biological activities such as reproduction while healing and damage control occurs.

 

[jhale]

Originally posted by spykes:
does that mean fragging will start warping the coral from it's natural form?

it would depend on how you frag it.

I suppose if you wanted to you could train a coral into a shape, much like they do the boxwood plants.

you could grow a birds nest for instance into the shape of a,
let's see, a fish

 

[nanoreefer22]

I guess if you let them grow long enough they should/could/would reproduce on themselves.

-Kris