Something Unique SPS wise

[Ostentum]

First off a few pictures of two of my corals. The first is a soloman islands Nuclear Green type Slimer. Extremely slow grower compared to other slimers. I have probably gotten 6 inches worth of growth in 1yr 5 months. Slimer photos are from Middle of January

and my Garf Bonzai back in December

Well while looking at my tank today I noticed that my bonzai had grown into the slimer. No biggy they will just kill some tissue on each other and that will be that. With the lights off it became apparent that wasnt quite the case. Yes they had killed off some of the tissue of each other.......but......... There is now purple pigment starting to run up the base of the slimer.

GRAFTED..... I have heard of Divaracatas taking Pociliopora pigments, and montis taking other monti pigments and a few simplex taking on pigmentation, but never thought that something like that would occur in my tank, especially with something like a Yongei, and the slowest growing Yongei that I ever seen. I will try and get some pictures but we are talking about a shaded region of the coral and about a 1/4" of pigmentation.
I tried to give a closer up view not the best but about the best I can get without a macro

 

[BillyC]

I have heard of divaricatas grafting. Looks awesome!

http://www.rockymountainfrags.com/product_info.php?products_id=247

 

[MammothReefer]

Nice! I made some posts about this a while back but it turned into a huge fight. Glad to see I'm slightly less crazy ^_^

 

[Reef Bass]

Interesting. Sure would be great to get a properly exposed and white balanced macro shot of where the two corals meet.

There may not be any grafting here. What if the bonsai is simply growing up over / on top of the slimer?

 

[mpoletti]

"grafting" is an infection. Once it's in your tank, any corals can "graft"; even cross species like montipora.

 

[Reef Bass]

Can you elaborate please Mark? Is there a pathogen at work here?

 

[mpoletti]

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=GFP+corals&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

After having "grafted" corals in my tank, I've had other corals graft that historically have not in the past. Other people have had similar experiences.

 

[FiShScaLe]

There was a thread on here a while back about this Im going to see if I can find it. It does look like the bonsai is growning over the slimer, maybe not though, if not sign me up for a frag :inlove:

 

[Reef Bass]

Thanks for the link Mark. Fascinating. I learn something new all the time with this hobby.

 

[JAustin]

I'm excited for ya, hopefully the grafting spreads and your wind up with a very interesting coral. Please take care of your tank and don't let it die!

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Whisperer]

Grafting is loosely used here. Grafting one specie to another will result in an individual possessing the true characteristics of each specie. Picture a lemon tree where orange, lime, grapefruit are grafted. Each specific branch will yield the fruit they meant to produce, not a mixture of all in one fruit. There is no genetic transfer or mixing in grafting.
With corals, I have seen different plating montipora frags glued closely together and resulted in multi-colored colony without true color mixing, they did fuse but retained their own color as they grew (the orange and green montiporas did not result in a a brown poo color).
Truly, two coral species will not mix genes unless gametes of the two form a zygote. Even then, the viability of the resulting new hybrid is questionable. We are talking about evolution of a new specie.
What I am saying is, this is not a graft in truest sense of the word nor it is a true genetic exchange.
What I am looking at is that the shadowing produces this effect of the growth. Look at the clear line of shadow in the right side, it's exactly where the color changes.

JMHO

 

[Ostentum]

I thought the same thing too whisperer when I first noticed it, until I looked at the corals with the lights off and it is distinctly another color. You can also see where the tissue is dead where the slimer and bonzai meet. I am not getting my hopes up too much until I see the pigmentation move up into the branches more if it ever does. Just thought I would share some beginnings though.

 

[xcorallusx]

looks normal to me