Too Much polyp extension on Monti?

[Darth Chingas]

I have a piece of Sunset Montipora that only recently started growing fast. My issue with it is the polyps are so large that it completely covers the base so all you see is this mass of green polyps and hardly any orange base. There are a couple of bumps where the base sticks out that are neon orange and have really nice contrast. My question is how do I get the base to show more? The rock to which it is encrusting is about half way up the tank (standard 75 gal) and directly under an AI Sol about 12" above the waterline.

There is a Chili Pepper monti at a store in Phoenix that is virtually all bright green base and depressions with red polyps of a similar size in their show tank which is what I am really looking for.

Thanks in advance and will add pictures as soon as I can.

 

[rovster]

Wow, pat yourself on the back cuz you doing something right. I would leave it be because its happy. Other option is moving it to a less happy area, maybe less or more flow, and see what happens. or maybe frag a piece and move that.

 

[Arkayology]

I find that my sunset monti likes high light and medium flow. The polyps will extend very far on mine when it is doing well. Not much you can do about it if you are doing something right as rovster said lol.

 

[Jcreefer1]

Wow, pat yourself on the back cuz you doing something right. I would leave it be because its happy. Other option is moving it to a less happy area, maybe less or more flow, and see what happens. or maybe frag a piece and move that.

Ditto that.....

 

[gmate]

I don't think this qualifies as a problem lol

 

[toothman]

that is kinda what they do, as well as get all over the rock and eventually on acros. Acro will generally kill the invading creaper. Not my favorite corals. Best thing to do is just keep it growing on a seperate rock on the floor of the tank.

 

[MammothReefer]

You can try a little more flow. Sunset monti may not actually be a monti or is a different variety then then most the other encrusting montis which is why the polyps are different. Just like the sand dollar monti. Even though it's invasive it's one of my favorite corals. I think it's worth it even if you have to "groom" it now and then to keep it away from acros speaking of which I need to get another frag of it.

 

[Useful_Idiot]

I too would like to know, I have plenty of green in my tank why does sunset in other people's tanks grow with the polyps farther apart or the base rise above the polyp sorta protecting it? Flow?