Invasive montipora

[watchguy123]

Love montipora, hate their aggressiveness. I find my monti's, mystic sunset, sunset, undata, Jedi mind trick, etc, all over take adjacent sps. They have weak chemotactic weapons but they just keep coming back, growing over adjacent sps by their rapid growth rate.

I have tried epoxy to cover them and prevent their overgrowth but the monti's are relentless and as sps colonies get denser it becomes impossible to get access to place epoxy anyway

How do others manage their monti's.

 

[theyangman]

I placed most of my montis on the same rock well away from other SPS I am afraid of losing. I only have 2 or 3 in my 220 gallon as well as they are pretty quick to seek and destroy.

 

[Tetra84]

I'd like to learn more about what other people do also, as my sunset looks good now, but I can see it's starting to spread out quicker and I give it about a year before it starts to instigate a turf war with my other sps.. is it easy to scrape off?

 

[ros_sco]

I'd like to learn more about what other people do also, as my sunset looks good now, but I can see it's starting to spread out quicker and I give it about a year before it starts to instigate a turf war with my other sps.. is it easy to scrape off?

In the past I glued some rubble rock in the path of the Sunset, and pried it loose as the Sunset grew over the top, then replaced it with a new piece. Worked well for making frags too. Now my sunset is placed on the bottom where it can't get on the rock at all.

 

[sonnus]

Well, if you want you can store frags of all of your pieces in a frag tank then introduce monti eating nudibranchs. Very drastic measure but I think this might be the only option on a well established tank.

As far as future placement, I've had good luck surrounding my montis with zoas/palys. They always go back and forth but the montis are never able to just go crazy. Th zoanthids always keep them corralled. Of course this only applies to encrusting montis.

 

[tdb320reef]

I always said that if I was going to do my 300 Gallon build again that for the first 6 month I would have grown monti in all of rock. it does two things. Keeps the rock together and makes great shelves to stack corals on.