mounting corals directly onto encrusting montiepora?

[homegrowncichlid]

Greetings, just recently received some encrusting Montipora monasteriata, and was wondering if I were to graft the frag onto my rock, and it expands to cover the entire area, later on, if I wanted to add a different branching coral, such as digitata, pocillipora or acros, would I be able to superglue a branch of it directly onto the montipora or would I have to clear a space by scrubbing the montipora off?
I don't have any of the branching corals yet, but am planning on getting those in the future, just wondering if I should hold off on introducing the montipora till I get the rest of the stuff, then add the montipora afterwards to fill in the space between the branching colonies.

 

[reefiness]

You would need to remove the monti from the area otherwise it will encrust over your new frag.

 

[Mark2480]

+1 on what reefiness said.

 

[nano]

I think you'd want to scrape a clearing for the glue to have some calcium to attach to. If glued directly to live tissue, the mucous and flesh would probably loosen the glue.

In terms of aggression, I've found that most branching corals have a more potent sting than almost all montipora. The only exception for me has been that rainbow montipora seems to be able to overpower many other corals by brute force and plating over them - for me the rainbow monti handily beat oregon blue tort and had some back and forth and held its ground with garf bonsai, and crushed sunset monti into oblivion.

Monastria such as reverse superman / mystic sunset has a very weak sting. To date I haven't seen them able to harm any neighbor except montipora setosa, which does not have a clear victor.

I would just be aware that the branching coral could overpower and overgrow the montipora, but likely not the reverse.

Are we placing bets? :wink1:

 

[ecvernon]

I placed sps coral frags on top of and around red plating montipora.
I was surprised how the plating montipora would overgrown and take over some Acropora. I think if it's just a frag that does not have heavy encrusting it could very well lose to the faster growing montiporA. In my case the montipora could not compete with the sting, so it just grows upwards till it is able to shade it out.

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