Skittles cyphastrea

Brooks Allman · Jan 10, 2019

my skittles cyphastrea was doing really well and growing under the ledge into the shade. Now it’s started to grow into the light but all the area that basically gets no light is skeleton. What should I do?

rkpetersen · Jan 10, 2019

This will happen with just about any photosynthetic stony coral that gets shaded. Your choice is usually either 1) remove what's throwing the shade (not really possible here), 2) add additional lights (if you're using a focal light source like a Radion or Hydra, then adding a more diffuse light like some T5s might help), or 3) just live with it.

Brooks Allman · Jan 10, 2019

rkpetersen said:
This will happen with just about any photosynthetic stony coral that gets shaded. Your choice is usually either 1) remove what's throwing the shade (not really possible here), 2) add additional lights (if you're using a focal light source like a Radion or Hydra, then adding a more diffuse light like some T5s might help), or 3) just live with it.

I gotcha. I just thought it was strange that it grew there with the same light as now and then is all of the sudden dying.

rkpetersen · Jan 10, 2019

Brooks Allman said:
I gotcha. I just thought it was strange that it grew there with the same light as now and then is all of the sudden dying.

Badly shaded areas of corals will continue living for awhile with very low level light but sooner or later the polyps disappear from those areas and the tissue, what's left of it, gets thin and white.

rkpetersen · Jan 11, 2019

I forgot to mention, when you place new frags in your tank, it's a good idea to imagine how they'll try to grow from each potential placement location. Slopes are fine as long as the slope is lit. Most corals won't grow very far into an underhang, for example.

This started as a cyphastrea frag placed near the bottom of a dimly (but fairly uniformly) lit slope. Notice how nicely it's grown along the wall, but just stops at every point where it runs into shadow.

mta_morrow · Jan 11, 2019

rkpetersen said:
I forgot to mention, when you place new frags in your tank, it's a good idea to imagine how they'll try to grow from each potential placement location. Slopes are fine as long as the slope is lit. Most corals won't grow very far into an underhang, for example.

This started as a cyphastrea frag placed near the bottom of a dimly (but fairly uniformly) lit slope. Notice how nicely it's grown along the wall, but just stops at every point where it runs into shadow.

Very nice piece!