Hey Everyone,
As you might recall, we frequently offer some of the so-called "deepwater" Acropora fairly regularly. I''d love to hear more of your experiences with them. I, personally, have become quite captivated by them.
We have noticed over the past several months that, once their needs are understood, even the more delicate ones seem to do well. The primary needs, in our experience, seem to be:
1) Lighting that is not too intense initially. We start the nely received maricultured pieces under T5, and they acclimate well. After a month or so, we ramp them up to halides (at the fringes of the light mover arrays). They seem to adapt well to 20K halides. It seems funny that we would worry about burning even deeper water Acros, but they really don't do well if you throw them right under halides. If you take the time to adapt them under lower light intensity for a bit, they definitely get richer, deeper colors, and then seem to go from there.
2) Strong flow. Almost every one that we have worked with (such as A. subgalbra, for example), seems to do well under higher flow. These corals almost always seem to get algae accumulations on them in low flow situations for some reason. Really strange. Perhaps it's the smoothness of their skeleton, or the delicate spacing of the branches on many species. Not sure, just speculating.
3) They do not respond well to traditional dip solutions in many cases. They sometimes lose tissue. Simple Lugol's dips in water seem to work best.
4) Feed as you would any Acro. But don't overfeed, as water quality should be quite high.
5) Don't disturb them too much. They just don't seem to respond well to excessive handling.
6) Stable environmental parameters. Little variance in water chemistry is ideal.
7) They seem to respond very well, color-wise, when the potassium levels are good. Perhaps a bit anecdotal, but we noticed a huge improvement in color of all of our corals when we started measuring and supplementing potassium as needed.
8) When fragging them, put them immediately in a high flow environment, and in a lighting regimen that is identical to the parent colony. No need to "ramp up" the lighting conditions for these frags, in our experience.
9) If you have a tabling form, consider gluing to a rock or frag plug "lengthwise" across the branch (i.e.; on its side). They seem to be "programmed" to table better that way!
10) Although the mother colonies respond fine to fragging, you son't want to go to crazy. They seem to take a bit longer than most Acros to begin growing again. Not sure why, and this is just our experience.
Hope these points are of interest. I am very curious about your personal experiences with these interesting Acros! Please share thoughts, experiences, ideas here!
Thanks!
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals
As you might recall, we frequently offer some of the so-called "deepwater" Acropora fairly regularly. I''d love to hear more of your experiences with them. I, personally, have become quite captivated by them.
We have noticed over the past several months that, once their needs are understood, even the more delicate ones seem to do well. The primary needs, in our experience, seem to be:
1) Lighting that is not too intense initially. We start the nely received maricultured pieces under T5, and they acclimate well. After a month or so, we ramp them up to halides (at the fringes of the light mover arrays). They seem to adapt well to 20K halides. It seems funny that we would worry about burning even deeper water Acros, but they really don't do well if you throw them right under halides. If you take the time to adapt them under lower light intensity for a bit, they definitely get richer, deeper colors, and then seem to go from there.
2) Strong flow. Almost every one that we have worked with (such as A. subgalbra, for example), seems to do well under higher flow. These corals almost always seem to get algae accumulations on them in low flow situations for some reason. Really strange. Perhaps it's the smoothness of their skeleton, or the delicate spacing of the branches on many species. Not sure, just speculating.
3) They do not respond well to traditional dip solutions in many cases. They sometimes lose tissue. Simple Lugol's dips in water seem to work best.
4) Feed as you would any Acro. But don't overfeed, as water quality should be quite high.
5) Don't disturb them too much. They just don't seem to respond well to excessive handling.
6) Stable environmental parameters. Little variance in water chemistry is ideal.
7) They seem to respond very well, color-wise, when the potassium levels are good. Perhaps a bit anecdotal, but we noticed a huge improvement in color of all of our corals when we started measuring and supplementing potassium as needed.
8) When fragging them, put them immediately in a high flow environment, and in a lighting regimen that is identical to the parent colony. No need to "ramp up" the lighting conditions for these frags, in our experience.
9) If you have a tabling form, consider gluing to a rock or frag plug "lengthwise" across the branch (i.e.; on its side). They seem to be "programmed" to table better that way!
10) Although the mother colonies respond fine to fragging, you son't want to go to crazy. They seem to take a bit longer than most Acros to begin growing again. Not sure why, and this is just our experience.
Hope these points are of interest. I am very curious about your personal experiences with these interesting Acros! Please share thoughts, experiences, ideas here!
Thanks!
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals
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