Leather Toadstool doing great but keeps bending way over

[swiss1939]

My leather toadstool has been the best performer in the 4 months of running this tank. Recently it seems to spend a few hours a couple times a day bent fully over aimed directly at the gyre near it. The rest of the daylight time it is straight up full polyp extension, but it will do this bent over thing twice a day, once during the daylight and once at night. The only other change I've done is turned up the flow overall on all power heads in my tank after having everything low/medium flow for 4 months, I realized I needed more flow for my hammers after seeing my LFS tanks with much higher flow.

Not sure if this is a common behavior for a leather toadstool or if it is in response to a couple encrusting montipora frags I recently placed a few inches from it, or its just adjusting to the higher flow overall.

Phosphates are consistent at 0.04ppm and Nitrates are consistently 10ppm.

 

[Midrats]

Totally normal. They inflate, deflate, bend, shut down, open, and get waxy looking then shed, just to mention a few things they do. Definitely give it room and consider what's near it as it will be shading and touching stuff soon.

 

[swiss1939]

Totally normal. They inflate, deflate, bend, shut down, open, and get waxy looking then shed, just to mention a few things they do. Definitely give it room and consider what's near it as it will be shading and touching stuff soon.

It has shed many times already and more than doubled in size in the past 4 months. But this bending shrinking and twisting behavior is a new one for it. And yes, the montis are just resting there on plugs still because there are holes in the rock there where they can sit temporarily as they acclimate to this tank. They will be moved in a month or so to final locations!

Thanks for the confirmation this is just normal quirky toadstool behavior.

 

[Midrats]

Sarcophytons are some of my favorites! A big toadstool always gets lots of attention from reefing "civilians". They couldn't care less about the SPS in the tank

 

[craigbuss]

They adapt and bend to however they like or want to be. Flow shouldn’t matter too much, mine gets blasted with flow and seems to love it as well as a lot of light.