skinny vs fat skirts?

[sneeyatch]

what causes the skirts to go skinny. i have a bunch of different colonies in my 10 gallon that all started with nice thick skirts. now they all have thinned out. they all look great and all parameters are in order. i got some good flow in there too.

just curious is all.

 

[Brock Fluharty]

Serious flow usually makes the skirts longer, and skinnier, so that could be why. Most people see it as a good thing I thought...I think they look even cooler with long thin skirts than those short fat ones. It's normal.

Brock

 

[chris2222000]

Bright lighting also does this in my tank. The ones closer to the halides tend to have longer skirts.
-Chris

 

[surfnvb7]

i agree with both. its a combination of light and flow. cant say one is more overpowering than the other.

can you give us some specs about your tank? type of lighting? how big is the tank? what kind of flow do you have in there?

 

[sneeyatch]

it's a 10 gallon with about 10 lbs live rock and 3 lbs live rubble substrate. 96 watt quad pc light fixture with 50/50 bulb. 2 power heads with total 295 gallons movement. hob penguin 170 power filter incase i need some media (and some additional movement) and a prizm skimmer.

this is mostly a sps / zoo dominated tank so far with a favia frag i had to pull from my other system.

they are all spreading very rapidly and look great, but was just curious about the skirts. i think the look cool too.

 

[surfnvb7]

flow sounds optimal. if not a little high for a 10g. so i'm gonna have to go with the reason your skirts are longer is b/c the increased flow, and a combination of the PC lighting. when the light isnt really that "intense", the skirts seem to get longer as though they are reaching for the light. but this only happened with about 50% of my zoas, not all of them did it.

i used to have a good thread out there that showed the difference b/w what my zoas looked like under PC for a couple months, and then MH for a couple months...no idea what the link was......but here are the pics...

i'm a dedicated MH user now. will never ever go back to using PC's after this remarkable change. and just to clarifty the above captioned pics...thats 5 months under PC, then 5 months under MH.......for a total of 10months.

hope that helps.

 

[MarvinsReef]

sneeyatch: awesome comparison pics.. I agree what was said above also.. flow and lighting has effect on your zoas being skinny or fat.. can you please post some pics of your zoas, maybe some with macro and some with full shot so we can see where the zoas are located in the tank..

surfnvb7: if you don't mind, can you please find that link again and pm it to me.. I'd like to read on it more..


Marvin

 

[sneeyatch]

i will post them when i get a chance - it will be later tonight or tomorrow. work has me slammed up right now.