Staghorn acropora growth pattern and light

[Ardeus]

Having too much light may cause stags to grow more branches than usual or is it just initial adaptation to the tank?

Alk 10
Ca 440
Mg 1450

580 watts of led lights over a 55" x 36" area.

 

[SMSREEF]

I don’t have an answer for you, but it looks like it’s growing great and very healthy!

I love the thick growth with lots of branching so I’m gonna follow along and see what people say.

 

[Ardeus]

I chose stags precisely because I didn't want a dense coral and it looks that with so many branches spurting all over, it's going to be impossible for fish to get through it.

When I saw the green slimer growing many branches I thought that maybe it was an initial response to a new environment, but when I recently added that teal stag with long branches, I wasn't expecting to see almost each polyp in that small area starting to turn into a new branch.

 

[motortrendz]

How strong is the flow on your tank ? I've noticed that when I have really good flow in my tank my corals tend to grow denser thicker formations ...maybe for strength or to try to get more polyp density to trap food? Just a theory.

 

[Ardeus]

There are 2 jebao CP-150 in the tank, the return is negligible. The flow is medium because it's a mixed reef and I feed 6 times per day varied foods.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Less light and less flow will cause acropora to grow skinny long branches with more space between them. More light and more flow will cause them to grow thicker shorter branches with less space between them. Also more light and flow will cause them to naturally table at the tops once they have a large base colony.
Yours looks normal, some of the branches won’t continue to grow and will become nubs. Keep us updated though I would like to see how it turns out. What lights are you using?

 

[Ardeus]

I'm using 2 x aquamedic angels and 1 old maxspect razor. I just did a review on the aquamedics, I have been using them for about a year. Crazy good fixtures

 

[Dana Riddle]

When I was at Aquatic Wildlife back in the 90's, we did a quick experiment. Two Acroporas were placed close together and were receiving the same amount of light (measured with a Li-Cor quantum meter) and flow (measured with a Marsh-McBirney electronic flow meter.) Once a day one Acro was isolated inside of an acrylic tube and rotifers were added and the coral was allowed to feed for an hours or so and the tube was removed. After a month, the fed coral was taller and the unfed was bushier. We speculated that the fed coral was less reliant on photosynthesis and exposed less area to light while the opposite was true for the unfed coral. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

What species of acropora? And was this tested again on other kinds of acropora to repeat the findings?

 

[Dana Riddle]

What species of acropora? And was this tested again on other kinds of acropora to repeat the findings?

This 'finding' was anecdotal at best. I would have to dig through my notebooks for more details (if any) - this was 22 years ago and my previous post has all details off the top of my head. I do know we did not repeat the procedure. I was working 16 hour days maintaining the systems and these experiments were squeezed in when possible. How to induce and maintain coral coloration was our main concern. Amazing how little we knew back then.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

That’s really cool, thanks for sharing that. I would love to see someone try and reproduce this in mass. I am always interested In articles about acropora and their ability to use foods. It’s amazing how much will still don’t know as well

 

[Dana Riddle]

Amazingly, the notes on this procedure were in the first notebook I went to... No Acropora species recorded, and the experiment went for two months. PAR was 270 micromole/m2/sec (metal halide.) In retrospect, wish I had recorded more info. This suggests feeding *might* influence coral morphology.