Bubble Coral Spawning....?...!...?...!

[donald altman]

Wow.. I am currently watching the neatest thing I have ever seen happen in my aquarium...

Let me tell this more of in a story sequence..

I have been doing alot of work on my tank and have figured out a way to increase and decrease my moonlight settings and have it sorta based on an actually moonlight cycle... tonight I was the first full moon and I couldn't be more surprised.

Here is a picture of the moonlight



My wife and I got off duty tonight... we let our new baby girl
spend the night with the grandparent for the first time so we went to dinner and a movie... so We haven't been home all night looking at the tank.. when I got in I was really surprised how bright the tank was and how focused of an area was lite.. it look amazing.. I sat and gazed thinking somehting look differn't... I looked harder at the brain coral and I couldn't belive it.. normally the coral looks like this...



Tognight is the first time I have ever been able to clearly see its mouths.. (yes two of them) This bubble is about the size of a volley ball toa basketball when fully expanded in the middle of the day. Tonight it was wide open all the inner bubble deflated with its tenticles out sweeping for food.. but to my amazment I saw something I had never seen before.. it looks like feather apendages that would usualy be within the coral outside right in the middle of the coral.. near its mouths.. or even comeing out of its mouths.


If you look in the "white" inner part of the coral you can see the feathers and if you look towards the top of the "middle white part" you can see what apears to be a smudge or something.. this is "smoke" or wha tI think is the release of sperm or eggs into the water column.
It is simply amazing to see... I think I got the conditions just right..
I fed the tank well with fish eggs (which I hand harvest from my saltwater fishing trips) I also have been making a new closed loop so main circulation had been cut off and tank just running on refugium pumps for current and a small powerhead... the light was brighter then normal and last night I turned up the heater about 2 degrease. I had decided during the fall I would drop the temp 2 deg.. then in the winter 2 more.. then in the spring back up and full summer back 2 more.. I have done this now every season the tank has been set.

I don't know if all this stuff is just sheer coincidence.. if I got lucky... if the coral isn't spawning and something freaky is happening.. or if this might have something to do with all the changes I have made and everything just made perfect conditions for the one night to trigger this... It probably wont ever happen agian... but it is the most beuatiful thing I have ever seen.



I wish you could see the color the moonlight is making this bubble coral look.. almost a peachy flesh color and the middle a pure white.. the color in the picure isn't exactly what you see when looking at it... usualy with lights on it is a greenish to flourecent green.... It's just plain ole cool