Maybe I've been lucky, but my acros seem to kill encroaching encrusting montis.
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Very prettyI have a few, but kind of force their growth I'm certain directions through pruning and such. I also won't place any more than 1/3 of the way up the tank so they will have a tough time getting to the expensive acros.
I personally love the look of some of them. My sunset Monti for one is a stunner. Beach Bum and Phoenix are nice as well. I did have a mystic sunset one time that became invasive and was an incredibly fast grower, so that particular morph gets isolated these days.
Another thing to consider is that often their light demands are lower than that of many Acropora species and in many sps systems may function well on rubble in the sand bed to make it easy to contain. (I do this with my chalice which can also be encrusting in many situations atleast for a while until they start to plate)
I have heard a few methods for checking growth, but like so many things in reefing, there is no consensus.If you are okay with the energy and time it takes to keep it isolate, no problem.
If you are just going to let it grow uncheck and non-isolated... terrible idea.
They look both nice and innocent.I have a bunch of encrusters. Love them. My pavona might eventually need to be dealt with as it has encrusted before I realized and could move the rock it is on. If it threatens my acros, I'll putty over where it is an issue. The rest shouldn't affect other corals, at least not for maybe years lol's
My encrusters:
Cyphastrea Jingle bell or meteor shower--encrusted it's rock and moving down
Leptastrea-John Deere-encrusted rock and moving down
Pavona-encrusting. Will have to watch
Montiporas:
Orange cap--on back of rock on right side. Can do what it wants
Rainbow--encrusting plug and onto rock. Moving down.
capricornis--tabling
Reverse Sunset starting to encrust
Setosa -growing but not encrusting
Mystic sunrise. hanging in there
blue digitata--is encrusting.
Ignore algae. It is gone
I have a Hollywood Stunner. Not really encrusting but it grows really fast. It's a good thing to, because it breaks off really easy. Broken pieces just keep on growing where ever they land.Well everything depends. I have an acro that is encrusting a fairly large area. After having my previous tank I swore never another Monti cap or a chalice as they grew so fast they took over the tank. I had a red Monti cap that would grow so fast I would break inches off of it everywhere and 3 days later it would be even bigger. A chip given to me became a piece about 3 feet long and multiple levels two feet tall. I got tired of breaking chunks off regularly and throwing it in the trash plus it would kill off any sps in its way.