No clear winners in battle to encrust?

[Joekovar]

I've been under the impression that some corals are just going to win battles against other corals. I've imagined a sort of food chain where coral A > B > C, and occasionally C > A. when it comes to battles for space. Today I noticed something that rocked that boat however.


My attached photo is obviously bad, but I think it illustrates what I'm seeing.

On the left there's a colony of Mystic Sunset Montipora, pretty much the whole bottom left corner is this colony, the darker area being long established encrustment, and the lighter area toward the yellow circles being relatively recent growth.
To the right of those yellow circles is a Forest Fire Digitata colony.

The lighter part of the sunset by the left circle has encrusted over the digitata which was there. I've noticed there is more interesting structure to the sunset where it had to contend with the digitata, than further to the left where it had free reign and has become just a dense sheet of polyps for the most part.

Now the yellow circle to the lower right is where the sunset is continuing to mow over the digitata, however the circle to the top left is where the digitata seems to have mounted a counter offensive, growing back over the sunset that'd encrusted over it.

I've had some pretty gnarly parameter swings in recent months as a result of neglect, and I'm about a month into getting things stable again.
I'm guessing the sunset is a little more hardy than the digitata, but the digitata is a better fighter when it's needs are met.

In any event, I thought it was pretty neat to see the tide turn in a coral battle for a change. Though, I'm a little nervous about what's going to happen between that sunset and the Walt Disney that's recovering on top of that column at the top left...

 

[boacvh]

I love that. They will go back and forth in that fight IME. Here is an old one of my battle of 5 montis. You can see how they have covered then enveloped each other at different places

 

[Joekovar]

Is that a spongodes?

Man I didn't think anything stood a chance against those. Mine was the size of my hand when I got it, and it's engulfed anything near it since.

One of these days I want to do maybe a 10G dedicated to spongodes and Christmas tree worms. Getting that worm rock has proven difficult though.

 

[boacvh]

Is that a spongodes?

Man I didn't think anything stood a chance against those. Mine was the size of my hand when I got it, and it's engulfed anything near it since.

One of these days I want to do maybe a 10G dedicated to spongodes and Christmas tree worms. Getting that worm rock has proven difficult though.

It is. I thought so too but the digitata and the Elkhorn seem to find ways around it

 

[Joekovar]

I'm wondering what's going to happen between this birdsnest and digitata. They started to go at it, but bubble algae stepped in and isolated them from each other before they could do much.

On one hand, I really want to frag that birdsnest, but I also want to see what happens here and last time I fragged it a lot more snapped off than I'd anticipated.

The Jedi mind trick is getting the upper hand on the digitata and the garf bonsai, which now that I look seems to have completely beaten the rainbow monti that was there.