Is this normal duncan growth?

[dimo]

I'm relatively new to reefing. I was a long time freshwater guy and converted over with my first reef tank about 4 months ago. My first coral was a gift from my brother in law, a 6 head duncan.

A few weeks ago I noticed new heads beginning to sprout. 2-3 new growths per head at the same time. Is this normal growth for these corals? I was told early on that they grow slow, but this seems pretty quick to me. I was only expecting one or two new heads every few months.

 

[Tahoe61]

I would not call them a slow grower at all. Under the right conditions they grow faster than many other LPS. Target feed them and they grow even faster. That is a beautiful specimen, you're obviously doing things right. :-)

 

[nfrench2100]

Yea I would say totally normal. I too, bought a 6 head Duncan this last September. It was one of my first corals. I saw new heads popping up almost instantly. I can now count a total of 21 new heads sprouting off the original 6 that’s I started with. My Duncan literally grows like a weed

 

[dimo]

That's good to hear. Mine took a few months to settle in. I actually didn't even know about dosing alk and calcium at the time. I figured a good water change schedule would have been enough for a 2 LPS corals and a few softies. Mid January I took a water sample to LFS and found out alk was low. I ended up buying a good test kit and 2 part ingredients and started dosing late January. Once I got my alk up the Duncan started growing almost right away.

 

[Nicholas Waggoner]

They are definitely not slow growers, I have only had my colony for about a month. I feed with reef roids twice a week and I have 5 heads sprouting from the base of the colony that originally had 3. Nice piece by the way!

 

[Reef Jeff]

Nice Duncan. I have one that started with three heads and in 2 months it now has six heads and has doubled in size. It loves small pieces of shrimp. Mine is under hybrid MH/T5/LED lighting in the bottom half of tank under moderate flow.

 

[Reef Jeff]