acan growth form?

[Tabasco1]

Most or all acan colonies I see kindof look like a mound. Is this always their growth form? Can they be encouraged to grow more laterally like a mat? Or will they encrust to a rock shape?

Thanks!

 

[returnofsid]

The "golfball Acan" I call them. This is mainly due to how the coral was fragged and mounted. Unfortunately, when small frags are made, and skeleton remains, the corals how nowhere to grow, except "down" the skeleton. When fragging, if you cut a majority of the skeleton, so the polyp is sitting on a thin skeleton, it can help keep this from happening. The thing is, Acans grow flesh faster than they grow skeleton. If fragged, and placed on piece of tile, it'll give somewhere for the flesh to grow "out" instead of just down.

 

[Tabasco1]

Fantastic explanation of why they always look like a golfball. So if I get a golfball and give it somewhere else to grow, it will spread out? It will just always have that initial golf ball form from the original frag? If I purchase an acan frag and it looks like that, can I frag it again and in doing so remove most of the under skeleton can I fix that?

Thank you!

 

[Paul_N]

IF you look on this site at some of the larger acan colonies the vendors offer, they are mostly flat.

 

[mdb_talon]

Fantastic explanation of why they always look like a golfball. So if I get a golfball and give it somewhere else to grow, it will spread out? It will just always have that initial golf ball form from the original frag? If I purchase an acan frag and it looks like that, can I frag it again and in doing so remove most of the under skeleton can I fix that?

Thank you!

Usually if you give it someplace to grow at the bottom it will spread out on its own yes. You can frag it yourself and like was said just remove as much of the skeleton underneath as reasonable and eventually you will end up with several frags that are much flatter.