question about coral growth

Guest · Feb 2, 2008

i still consider myself fairly new to coral because i havent seen a whole lot of growth.
i have a few spacific questions about coral growth for various types of coral (what to look for when you think it might be growing/spreading)
first off, as most of you know i had a sort of sps melt down, but i still have i think 4 sps peices. i think id consider 3 of them with bad color and the other was just orange anyways.
i have an orange cap well.. peices of one (i broke it into peices on accident) - im curious if where its grown turns lighter or does that mean its dying from the outside?
i know its grown for sure because its bonded to the rock i had it glued to, but now all around the edge its getting thicker and stuff, but its also i lighter color.
let me know what you think about that.
now, im curious how rics grow ( do they grow big and then split, and so on - or do they lift their food and drag around like shrooms do : i think : )
also, zoas - do they sprout out from under other zoas or do zoas do the dragging thing?
oh, and corals like candy coral and frogspawn. do heads split, do they sprout out and grow and so on?
and then my final question (for now) is - how do you tell a zoa from a paly?
thanks!
-ben
if there are other corals youd like to talk about id love to read it, these are just the ones im curious about right now.

Phathead · Feb 2, 2008

well as far as ricordias go they will as far as I have seen with mine is the will start by growing new mouths then within a couple of weeks they will start to form a circle then completely split from each other then youll have two. Alittle tip if you to induce splitting then cut the ric in half making sure to get alittle of the single mouth on each piece then set them in low current away from each other or they will grom back together. A safer way to frag them is pull them up exposing the suction part and clip it right before it is attached to the rock thus cutting the ric from the rock leaving the base to regrow into a new one. Hope this helps.

phishcrazee · Feb 3, 2008

I wouldn't necessarily say that new growth on a cap is lighter, it might be, but it probably depends upon the particular variety. It sounds like your orange cap is growing though if it's bonded to the rock. It helps to take a picture when you first get a new coral, then take another picture a month later and compare the pictures, as it's hard to see new growth sometimes when you look at it every day /site/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif Some sps growth is very slow and that's just the way it is. Do you check your calcium and alkalinity levels? If your levels are ok and you have enough flow and all of your other parameters are good AND you have enough light, you should be getting growth. This is a very simplified answer though, there are many factors that play a part..........
Zoo's spread in a "mat" manner........ they spread out a base and more zoos will grow from that base. Paly's are usually larger than zoos and a paly will close up around food (mysis etc). Somebody correct me if I'm wrong /site/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif

Travis · Feb 4, 2008

All of my previous caps and sps showed white/lighter growth tips. zooantheal makes up the color and takes a little while to occupy a fast growing tip.

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