Orange digitata growth

[Pacman100]

My tank is mostly LPS/Softies, but I thought I would try a lower light SPS such as a digitata and place it higher up in the tank. All the LPS are doing well, growing and coloring up nicely, but my orange digitata has exhibited strange growth. Since putting it in, the branches have hardly grown at all and the base keeps encrusting over the rock it is on. The base is showing no signs of slowing down its encrusting of the base rock.

The tank is a 45 gallon breeder with about 15x turnover per hour and 375 watts of VHO lighting. There are no measurable organics, and a light fish bioload. Ca=400-450, Alk 8-10 dKH.

What I am thinking are the possible culprits for this different growth pattern are:
1) Not enough high intensity light
2) "low" water turnover (ok for LPS though)
3) Possible leather coral toxins (I do use carbon, change every month).

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Pacman100]

Oops, I took pictures. Here are the before and after:

 

[jsweir]

Frag is doing fine. Each coral depending on it's environment will lay down a base of varying size before growing outward. Your frag looks very healthy and has an active growth tip (white) on one of the branches. Be happy and watch it grow. How long between pics?

 

[sps_addict]

I agree. The growth pattern is fine, it'll start branching soon enough. It looks great! Keep up the good work.

 

[Pacman100]

Ok, thanks for the quick reply. I was a little concerned about it starting to overgrow the neighboring blasto.

It's about 4 months or so between photos. It was a tiny little frag at the bottom of a LFS tank that I felt sorry for, and just asked if they would give it to me. They did, so at least I can say it was a good deal!

 

[jsweir]

I would be concerned about the blastos. You may have to move them eventually.

 

[Pacman100]

Yeah, I was thinking about moving the blastos anyway. I think the top one just gets a little too much light, his coloration isn't as intense. Thanks for your help!!

 

[drtango]

It's not the sarco--i took this pic to show the weird "pigtail" growth form of the digi. The cap is happily growing INTO the yellow leather. Note the big encrustation on the digi.

I've found that the digi's tend to put out a big crust in higher flow areas, then take off. No worries, it'll grow.

John

 

[SaraB]

My orange digi also has stange growth as all the new branches eventually grow downward and re-attach to the rock work. Here's a photo:
http://www.toizrit.com/fishtank/orangecoral.jpg

 

[SaraB]

Oops, here's the actual photo ...

<img src="http://www.toizrit.com/fishtank/orangecoral.jpg"></img>

 

[Horace]

Each of my Digis act completly different. Some of my digis dont hardly encrust at all and start growing longer branches immediatly, but others have encrusted over a half dollar before doing anything. All I can say is if it is doing ANYTHING it is healthy. BTW I would like to point out, Digis arent exactly a low light loving SPS. They actually LOVE lots of light. They show thier best colors when pelted with large amounts of light. While they will survive in lower light, they dont exactly grow fast or color very well.

 

[Chaotic Reefer4u]

nice piks...

 

[hawaiianwargod]

sweet...love monti's in general.