okay I think I scewed up. Help!!

[jedi31]

Okay I recieved this beautiful Acro colony and I want to put it in the center of the tank. But unfortuntely I have a monti encrusting all over my live rock that I knew was going to be problem after a few weeks of placing it there. It's not a Cap but instead it encrusts all over the live rock and it started to form plates like a Cap. I fragged most of the plate portion and removed the base for the spot where the Acro will be going. But there is still a lot of the monti that is encrusted on the rock. Will this stuff grow back and continue to grow or will it bleach out and get covered with algae. I thinking I will have to pull the rocks out and remove the monti manually. This seems impossible and mostly I think I made a mess of this. I'm glad I saved most of the coral but I feel bad for the encrusted part that is left on the rock and I don't want to leave it there either. Did I screw this up. Does anyone have any feedback regarding this issue. What happens when people moved their tanks? How do they get their monti's off thier rocks?

Pleas help Thanks

 

[slojmn]

Well...I'd say the encrusting monti will grow back and the acro and monti will fight for space. I am unsure which will win, maybe someone else will chime in. If it were me I would get the monti rock out and let the encrusted portion die outside fo the tank. This would only take overnight but you would sacrifice the monti on the rock plus all of the live bacteria, wormies, etc. that are in the rock. Your other optin is to take the rock out and scrape the living heck out of the monti and try to get every last bit off the rock and then return the rock to the tank and mount your acro.

I know it is hard to sacrafice stuff. I put corals a bit to close to each other over the last year and decided to re-do my aquascaping recently. In the process my friend and I (mostly my friend as he is really good at it) popped all sorts of acros off rocks, scraped encrusitng portions off and re-glued, replaced, and reworked the whole tank to give everything more room. In the process I had to give up some of my corals...not enough room to grow out. I also had to sacrafice encrusting portions of a few things. make sure you think about the growth potential for each coral and give it the proper amount of room. Tough to do but necessary to avoid potential coral losses down the road. Good luck.

 

[jedi31]

Thanks for your help. I have a nice project when I get out of work today. I think I will use a chiesel and remove it that way. The rocks are pretty big and I hate to lose other stuff. I just started SPS a few months ago after keeping LPS and these things grow like mad so I was unprepared for the growth. I guess it's a good thing!

Mike

 

[RichConley]

If the monti is growing everywhere, just take a big chunk of rock down to the LFS. I'm sure they'll give you enough credit to replace the rock, and probably buy another coral or two.