Thriving white acro?

[West1]

I’ve had this frag for about a year and I thought I lost it when it was roughly 1/2”. It’s spread out about 1.5-2” in diameter and has started to take off. It has 3-4 branches (idk what you call it) and has about 40 little nubs w/green tips starting to shoot out…
What gives with the almost 100% white branches? It’s been the white color for about… 6-7 months maybe?

Color of coral is a purple with a green tip. No idea what it is, it was given to be from a tank blow out.
Yellow circle is the acro and arrow is longest piece that’s almost pure white. Has about 8-10 polyps and one long polyp in the center of each shoot.


Side view below

House lights off but the blue flashlight makes the coral color look different.

 

[tbrown]

Lighting and nutrients can affect the coloration. If it's growing it's happy though. Lowering light intensity can darken the colors.

 

[Timfish]

Sometimes corals can live without algal simbionts. Calcification will be greatly reduced however as most of teh energy required comes from the photosynthates provided by zooxanthellae. Here's a couple papers if you're interested.

This paper showed ammonia consumption by corals was almost exclusivly for their algal simbionts:

Ammonium Uptake by Symbiotic and Aposymbiotic Reef Corals: Ingenta Connect

www.ingentaconnect.com

This paper foound "white"and aparently bleached corals ob a reef that were healthy and not bleached.

White but not bleached: photophysiological evidence from white Montastraea cavernosa reveals potential overestimation of coral bleaching

Climate change and other types of environmental stress are known to increase corals’ vulnerability to bleaching, a process whereby colonies lose their colour either due to the loss of photosynthetic symbionts or their pigments. Although bleaching

www.academia.edu

 

[Charlie the Reefer]

Fascinating... Most of my acros are doing well, but I have one which has completely bleached, and yet continues to base out and sprout nubs.

 

[tbrown]

SBB has recently started selling nearly white Acros that are happy and healthy. I think they just require much higher PAR. I've had a couple of my Acros fade out to a very light pink from a deep red, still growing, still PE, significantly lighter color even though it's in lower PAR than a few others.

 

[Vivid Creative Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

This coral came into the tank as a frag with color (greens I think) and did OK, but never really grew much. Then about a 6 to 8 months months ago, it started loosing color but also started growing. Its been laying down a base and just recently started sprouting lots of branches.

These pics make it look more pink than it visually look. Visually its more of an off white color, as opposed to a full bleached looking white.

Here's a top-down shot of that same coral


and you can see its positioning in the tank - about mid-way down in the center.