Coralline Algae growth on Plating Montipora

[ReeferWarrant]

I have had this frag for a couple months now and it has been a lesson for me in SPS corals alone. The issues I have currently overcome are high PO4, Alk stability and lack of flow for it. So now I have good polyp extension and the flesh is iridescent, making me think it is doing well. My issue is while I was learning it receded to the center and the ends of the plate have coralline algae growing on them. Do I let the coral take its space back over or do I remove the coralline from the skeleton? If so, how should I go about removal?

 

[Snoopdog]

I have had this frag for a couple months now and it has been a lesson for me in SPS corals alone. The issues I have currently overcome are high PO4, Alk stability and lack of flow for it. So now I have good polyp extension and the flesh is iridescent, making me think it is doing well. My issue is while I was learning it receded to the center and the ends of the plate have coralline algae growing on them. Do I let the coral take its space back over or do I remove the coralline from the skeleton? If so, how should I go about removal?

From what I understand coralline algae will not grow on healthy coral tissue. I would just let it grow.

 

[Ocelaris]

I had the same thing on a monti down low that was damaged. It first got hair algae, then coralline covered the spot. It's been over a year and the coralline is just covering that one spot, and otherwise the coral is fine. I would leave it, it's possible the plating monti would grow back over it eventually. There's definitely no live coral under there though, so if you take off the coralline, it'll just grow hair algae. My corals as they're encrusting will kill any nearby coralline algae, leaving a white ring in front of it's growth, so I don't doubt the coral will eventually win out over coralline.