View Single Post
  #665  
Old 11/28/2006, 12:46 PM
Travis Travis is offline
Premium Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Posts: 5,286
My friend is bringing someone over to look at my tank this week so I was cleaning up bryopsis last night. I have a large poccillopora that used to reproduce via polyp bail-out a lot so there are a lot of little pocci colonies scattered throughout the tank. I always thought it was kind of cool but now that some of them have gotten bigger (larger than my fist) they have become a real nuisance. Since the tank is primarily acroporas, I figured they would keep the poccis pushed back but that has not been the case. Every pocci colony ends up taking over the acropora. I don't think they sting very well but they also do not seem to be bothered by the sting from the acros. I think their primary aggressive mechanism is extending their polyps for long periods of time. This causes their polyps to rub against the adjacent coral and over time this stresses and kills the adjacent coral's tissue in that area. The pocci then starts to overgrow the other coral due to its weed-like growth rate. I had a few acro colonies that were getting choked out lately so I decided to remove any traces of pocci that I could get to in the tank. I was able to get all the branches but most of their bases were not removable.