Flourescent Pink Monti?!

[youngreefer33]

Hey Everybody,
I recently bought a piece of plate Montipora at my LFS. They had it mislabeled as an Acro, so I wasn't able to get a species name or anything. The unique thing is that it is fluorescent pink, almost to the point of being translucent! I've never heard of a bright pink Monti like that before. I'm keeping it in the same positioning as my orange Monti Cap, but I don't know much about it. Has anyone ever seen anything like it? How fast do you think it'll grow?

[cmc0814]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but it sounds like a chalice coral. They commonly get mislabeled as montis (I got one too as a monti), and they are found with those colors. If it is a chalice, it's an LPS.

HTH

[rwrussom]

I have the same. Started as an orange brown and in the right location has gone hot pink. It seems to hold the color in higher light and flow. Lower light and flow for frags from same piece has yielded peach-orange polyps and even lower light leads to overall darkening. Moderate growth.

Well just reread original post. Mine is a digi not a plating.

[cmc0814]

Wow, that's cool. I guess I stand corrected!

[slojmn]

Seems that if it is almost "translucent hot pink" it could be bleaching out. Not saying it is just a possibility. If not it sounds pretty nice. A picture would be great.

[gcarroll]

Originally posted by slojmn
Seems that if it is almost "translucent hot pink" it could be bleaching out. Not saying it is just a possibility. If not it sounds pretty nice. A picture would be great.

I was thinking the same. I had a hot pink digitata that I later found was just bleached.

[youngreefer33]

Yeah. I've had it about a week now, and it doesn't seem to be bleaching at all. I can tell it's grown a bit. The polyps are definitely minute, seemingly almost nonexistent. It's not a chalice. Thanks though. I'll try and post a pic.

[nwrogers]

In my experience any orange digi or cap will turn florescent pink when it is in or almost in a bleached state. I have seen an orange digi turn pink when a friend of mine switched from 175W to 400W bulbs. After the coral acclimated itself it turned back from pink to orange. I have seen some caps be able to keep their pink long term but that was a result of the water they were in and the light they were under. If you have an orange cap and you put this pink one right next to it chances are very good it will turn orange just like the one you already have. If you want it to keep that pink color than move it up as high as it can go…

[youngreefer33]

Sorry. No luck with the pic.

[Flint&Eric]

ime, very low nutrients+bright light turns orange digitata pink.

[nwrogers]

Originally posted by Flint&Eric
ime, very low nutrients+bright light turns orange digitata pink.

I agree.

I remember a while back when Iwan came out with photos of his tank I remember thinking it looks like all those corals are on the verge of death I remember reading sometime after those photos he claimed he had found a way to selectively poison zooxanthellae to obtain those amazing colors. I can’t remember where I read that but I do remember he had a bright pink digi, AKA a common orange digi knocking on deaths door. One of my fellow reef keepers here in NY and a very gifted scientist has been working with Cornell University to study the photosynthesis and coloration in SPS corals. He speculates that corals have their most intense colors right before they bleach and we are all keeping our corals in a suspended bleached state, some more than others of course. So I agree with Flint&Eric in that any environmental stress factor we can introduce into our systems will help corals have their most intense colors. That includes extremely bright lighting, no food/low nutrients, poison, etc.

PS The above is in no way an attack on Iwan or his beautiful tank. To each there own I say…

[blmeier7]

I remember a while back when Iwan came out with photos of his tank I remember thinking it looks like all those corals are on the verge of death I remember reading sometime after those photos he claimed he had found a way to selectively poison zooxanthellae to obtain those amazing colors. I can’t remember where I read that but I do remember he had a bright pink digi, AKA a common orange digi knocking on deaths door. One of my fellow reef keepers here in NY and a very gifted scientist has been working with Cornell University to study the photosynthesis and coloration in SPS corals. He speculates that corals have their most intense colors right before they bleach and we are all keeping our corals in a suspended bleached state, some more than others of course. So I agree with Flint&Eric in that any environmental stress factor we can introduce into our systems will help corals have their most intense colors. That includes extremely bright lighting, no food/low nutrients, poison, etc.

Does this mean my brown washed out corals are really healthy

Thanks for the info, it's very interesting

[Flint&Eric]

I remember a while back when Iwan came out with photos of his tank I remember thinking it looks like all those corals are on the verge of death I remember reading sometime after those photos he claimed he had found a way to selectively poison zooxanthellae to obtain those amazing colors. I can’t remember where I read that but I do remember he had a bright pink digi, AKA a common orange digi knocking on deaths door. One of my fellow reef keepers here in NY and a very gifted scientist has been working with Cornell University to study the photosynthesis and coloration in SPS corals. He speculates that corals have their most intense colors right before they bleach and we are all keeping our corals in a suspended bleached state, some more than others of course. So I agree with Flint&Eric in that any environmental stress factor we can introduce into our systems will help corals have their most intense colors. That includes extremely bright lighting, no food/low nutrients, poison, etc.

decreasing zooxanthellae is far from bleaching, it's also far from the verge of death. it is very difficult to label it bleaching when growth rates are at or exceed higher density levels. that is far from stress too. imo.

corals should have their "best" colors before their bleach or early on in the bleaching stages...as they expell zooxanthellae their colors will better come through.

and poison? zeovit makes bbalance and spur2 which do have a lightening effect on corals...but to label them poison is a bit extreme. alcohol is also poison, but we do not say "i took down a case of poison last night" i think you get my point

jmo.

[nwrogers]

Originally posted by blmeier7
Does this mean my brown washed out corals are really healthy

Thanks for the info, it's very interesting

Well, I guess it depends. Some corals exhibit bright colors in the wild naturally all of the time. I would think that divers would primarily choose these corals when collecting from the reef. If your coral was brown when it was collected from the reef and it is still brown than I would assume that is a good thing. If your coral was orange in the wild and now it is brown I would guess that something is wrong or your water has too many nutrients and your coral is for lack of a better term overfed. If your coral was orange in the wild and is now pink than your coral may be underfed or is reacting to another stress factor. There are so many things that can effect coral coloration that it is hard to say that that it is strictly nutrients in this case. I remember when I first got into SPS years ago and all of my corals kept turning brown. I couldn’t figure out what was going wrong until I read the back of the kalk container and it said to drip it in slowly NOT mix up a gallon and pour it in Brown corals can be a sign of something wrong but sometimes even if you do everything right some corals are just destined to be brown. Just my opinion…

[nwrogers]

Originally posted by Flint&Eric
decreasing zooxanthellae is far from bleaching, it's also far from the verge of death. it is very difficult to label it bleaching when growth rates are at or exceed higher density levels. that is far from stress too. imo.

corals should have their "best" colors before their bleach or early on in the bleaching stages...as they expell zooxanthellae their colors will better come through.

and poison? zeovit makes bbalance and spur2 which do have a lightening effect on corals...but to label them poison is a bit extreme. alcohol is also poison, but we do not say "i took down a case of poison last night" i think you get my point

jmo.

Everyone has a right to their opinion. Isn’t the definition of a coral bleaching when it expels it’s zooxanthellae? So if what you say is true that a coral will have its best colors when they have partially expelled their zooxanthellae that it is also true when I say that corals have their best colors when they are partially bleached or in a suspended bleached state.

Haha, I knew the poison would get someone out there! I will have to talk to my friend to see if he has that link that describes what Iwan did to get those colors.

[Flint&Eric]

yeah i said to my self poison?!

imo bleaching is an expelling of a large majority of the symbiotic algae. making it white. this isnt a prolonged state, but a brief one that usually causes death

i feel it's wrong to say if the coral was brown in the wild and in your tank that it's healthy. that "same" coral from the same spawn could have grown in a low nutrient area in the ocean and been solid blue...just look at trading corals amonst locals, they can look drastically different but all are still healthy.

it's a very fine line, but imo if the corals shows good growth that is more important than the color.

in case you didnt notice all the imo's, this is all jmo.

eric

[mdt178]

was it looking something like this?

[youngreefer33]

Yes. It's very much like that. Even a shade lighter. I'll have to ask my LFS a bit more about it's origins when I go back the next time. Following your discussion, in my healthy reef tank, this piece of pink will essentially become an orange Monti (unfortunately I already have a showpiece of that. :/ )?
will a coral continue to grow even if it is a bleached state?

[nwrogers]

It should be fine it may keep its pink color but it may not. Just thought I would give you a heads up incase it turns orange.

[youngreefer33]

cool. thanks everybody.

[Tennsquire]

Here's a frag of a mother colony that's Bubbalicious pink with faint blue polyps. It's not bleached, and it grows like a weed. Has been pink since the day I got it.

[barjam]

I have two pieces of the same orange monti, one low one high. The high one is pink and doesn't grow very fast, the low one is orange and grows really quick.

For what it is worth.

[youngreefer33]

Yeah. I've got a showpiece of the orange monti cap at the same level as the pink. Mine looks exactly like the pic Tennsquire posted. What kind of monti is it?