what causes corals to swell?

[arpr30]

Thanks everyone.

I do feed heavy... reefroids, LPS pellets, nori, brine shrimp, frozen foods. I have baby Bangaii in the sump so feeding them very frequently too. Cheato in with them gets halved weekly.

Found if I don't pile the food in the no3 po4 becomes undetectable and my zoa start to shrink, the Xenia will nearly disappear.

Trying to find the balance in a mixed reef is a juggling act.

What's your secret for such beautiful montis, mine don't seems to do well always.

 

[Mad Doc]

I know this form is pretty old but if anyone out there cares heres my two cents:
I visited SCRIPPS last year and talked to one of the grad students doing reserch on coral response to light and he was telling me that the ammount a coral swells is direclty proportional to the light they are reviving, mostly having to do with intensity. He was showing me how soft coral will swell up much more under brighter light.

Hey I saw your reply here and I was wondering if you got more information on this? I got 2 different hammers, they were both with perfectly normal hammer shaped tips when I got them and they slowly changed to this weird bloated tips? They were both receiving quite a bit of light to be fair pretty much what you’d put SPS under. Wondering if it’s light or flow?

 

[1979fishgeek]

I’ve never been able to pinpoint exactly why my corals would randomly swell up like that I was using a lot of natural seawater at the time and if I was to guess I’d say it’s a feeding response to something in the water, as they would do it after water changes quite regularly and were under strong lighting. I’d pump the water directly from the tidal estuary straight into the tank and it was often a little cloudy/turbid from the mud flats I collected from, the skimmer took out the silt within a hour and could see it was just very fine green/brown ultra fine silt. They thrived and were incredibly fast growers I think they just loved the NSW and whatever was in it.

 

[Garf]

Hey I saw your reply here and I was wondering if you got more information on this? I got 2 different hammers, they were both with perfectly normal hammer shaped tips when I got them and they slowly changed to this weird bloated tips? They were both receiving quite a bit of light to be fair pretty much what you’d put SPS under. Wondering if it’s light or flow?

Appears to be maximizing surface area for some unknown reason. Light absorption, nutrient maximization, release of exudates, release of photosynthetic compounds (similar). if it’s healthy I wouldn’t worry.