Torts growing real "stringy"

[dayze9]

My torts have been growing real stringy lately. Anyone know if this is a lighting issue  or  chemistry? I switched all if my lighting to led, but this was a few years back. My chemistry seams to fluctuate due to an unreliable calcium reactor, but this isn't anything new either. Has anyone else had this problem?

 

Thanks.

Edited April 19, 2017 by dayze9

[danlu_gt]

Looks great to me.

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[badxgillen]

I would also say that flow is another factor here as well as type of tort. I have ad some rainbow torts in low flow just get thing and more fragile when ones under higher light and flow get a little more dense and stouter...while Oregon tort is thick and dense no matter the flow and lighting.

They do look happy so just let em do their thing, if you watn I can take a frag at some point and see if i works out differently under other conditions in my tank  

[Emerald525]

lol I would agree. They look very healthy. I would take them off your hands if you don't like them. ?

I get what you are saying in that the structure looks finer than in other tanks. I have noticed that with zoas too. For some you can get really big polyps and others they are half the size. The main difference I have seen is amount of flow at least for zoas.

[Emerald525]

Funny Bert and I posted the same thing almost at the same time. ?

[albertareef]

I would likewise be suspicious of flow.  If you start poking around at images online, you can see some pretty significant differences in structure based on localized conditions so I would not view your growth patterns as anything outside the normal boundaries or indicative of anything wrong.  They do look really healthy!

[danlu_gt]

Let's put some in my tank so we can test out some theories. ;-)

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[dayze9]

Thanks everybody. I have them under an assortment of flows. The 2 in the photos are under low flow, but i have some in my display that are under high flow. I appreciate the offers to take them off my hands for scientific purposes as well ?.

[dayze9]

Here are the same two torts under high flow and probably higher lighting.

[albertareef]

25 minutes ago, dayze9 said:

Thanks everybody. I have them under an assortment of flows. The 2 in the photos are under low flow, but i have some in my display that are under high flow. I appreciate the offers to take them off my hands for scientific purposes as well ?.

You will find plenty of folk on here willing to take nice acros from you... for scientific purposes of course 

[danlu_gt]

Beautiful Achilles!

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[dayze9]

1 hour ago, danlu_gt said:

 

Beautiful Achilles!

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Thanks, it's a real prick though. Won't allow ANY other fish in the tank, not just tangs, but most any other fish. 

[Emerald525]

What size tank do you have that Achilles looks fat and healthy ! Can we get a full tank shot ?

[dayze9]

1 hour ago, Emerald525 said:

What size tank do you have that Achilles looks fat and healthy ! Can we get a full tank shot ?

Thank you, I bought it as a juvenile, didn't even have the orange teardrop yet. My display is 180, but as you will see, it's pretty empty. I'm at work right now I will post picks tomorrow.

[pdxmonkeyboy]

Do corals exhibit tropism? That is, a direct response to environmental conditions; in this case flow?
Plants in windy areas will have thicker stems.. because the tissue in the stem is being torn by the wind and reparing itself. Curious to know if coral exhibit the same thing... and more interesting..how? .

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[albertareef]

1 hour ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Do corals exhibit tropism? That is, a direct response to environmental conditions; in this case flow?
Plants in windy areas will have thicker stems.. because the tissue in the stem is being torn by the wind and reparing itself. Curious to know if coral exhibit the same thing... and more interesting..how? .

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Interesting question. From a purely observational perspective I would say yes - at least in some form but I haven't looked for a reference for this. As to how/why I would love to know if someone has studied this.

 I have noticed that mild iritation seems to prompt branching, at least on some corals - perhaps by inducing micro abrasion stimulated repair of some sort - so I could see how this might be one response.  Also wonder if there is some stimulus that prompts a radial coralite to convert to an axial one (like apical meristem in plants?) - which could also produce branching.  As far as branch thickness, lobular growth vs branching and all the other variations... haven't a clue. Anyone read up on this?  Does seem like a fascinating topic (for those with the geek gene anyway). 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

well in plants.. the apical meristem, it is controlled by hormones.. auxin to be specific. I would think that it has to hormonal as well.
My curiosity was peaked when i read that frags grow faster when placed on their side (even though every single one i see on this site are always vertical) that leads me to think there is some type of hormone that is being produced in the newly growing tissue that regulates other growth.
But alas, this is all just guessing on my part and projecting my botanical knowledge on to coral.



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[pdxmonkeyboy]

found this... pretty enlightening. and for those that can't endure journal articles... there is even pictures!!!

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/10212/379.%2520Effect%2520of%2520nutrient%2520diffusion%2520and%2520flow%2520on%2520coral%2520morphology.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1eBAu1uuMfEqtqmcr6yIYpdLMw0g&nossl=1&oi=scholarr


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[dayze9]

45 minutes ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

found this... pretty enlightening. and for those that can't endure journal articles... there is even pictures!!!

http://scholar.google.com/scholar_url?url=https://dr.ntu.edu.sg/bitstream/handle/10220/10212/379.%2520Effect%2520of%2520nutrient%2520diffusion%2520and%2520flow%2520on%2520coral%2520morphology.pdf%3Fsequence%3D1&hl=en&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1eBAu1uuMfEqtqmcr6yIYpdLMw0g&nossl=1&oi=scholarr


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I'll have to check this out when i get to a computer.

[dayze9]

5 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Do corals exhibit tropism? That is, a direct response to environmental conditions; in this case flow?
Plants in windy areas will have thicker stems.. because the tissue in the stem is being torn by the wind and reparing itself. Curious to know if coral exhibit the same thing... and more interesting..how? .

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I have one tank where you can actually see the water flow by the way the corals  have grown around the flow. I'll post a pic soon.

[pdxmonkeyboy]

Well the long and short of it is that the author found a plausible explanation for growth patterns of coral based on flow models and how they are diffused relative to velocity. The theory being that the corals would grow in a manner to maximize food capture. It's a good theory based on solid assumptions but it is unfortunately a qualitative exolanation. Which is a researchers way of saying "This all sounds good but I can't actually back it up with statistical analysis" Two things I thought were .. huh, this would actually mean corals are more compact in high flow (less need to maximize food capture) and two, I think this may be related to really low flow scenarios as the units of flow (cm/s) seems really low to me. We always used meters/sec for stream velocities and even slow moving streams (slower than my wavemakers at their lowest setting) were much higher than the flow numbers shown in the report. Meaning there may be a threshold that this theory brakes down.

But as Sean mentioned, this may be entirely too geeky for most peeps.

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[dayze9]

13 hours ago, Emerald525 said:

What size tank do you have that Achilles looks fat and healthy ! Can we get a full tank shot ?

Alright here's the full tank shot. It looks better with the lights on... 

[Emerald525]

6 minutes ago, dayze9 said:

Alright here's the full tank shot. It looks better with the lights on... 

Oh sweet you have an in wall!! Lucky you!! You have been holding out on us!! Where's your tank build thread !

[dayze9]

39 minutes ago, Emerald525 said:

Oh sweet you have an in wall!! Lucky you!! You have been holding out on us!! Where's your tank build thread !

No thread. It was a quick build. My wife went to Georgia for training for 4 days, and i put a tank  in the wall while she was gone. It's the old expression... It's better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. I'm slowly (painfully slow) seeding it with frags. The thought was if i start with a frag it will look totally natural as it grows out, like it belongs there and wasn't just placed. Well, it looks the same either way, so i might just start throwing colonies in there. 

[albertareef]

2 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Well the long and short of it is that the author found a plausible explanation for growth patterns of coral based on flow models and how they are diffused relative to velocity. The theory being that the corals would grow in a manner to maximize food capture. It's a good theory based on solid assumptions but it is unfortunately a qualitative exolanation. Which is a researchers way of saying "This all sounds good but I can't actually back it up with statistical analysis" Two things I thought were .. huh, this would actually mean corals are more compact in high flow (less need to maximize food capture) and two, I think this may be related to really low flow scenarios as the units of flow (cm/s) seems really low to me. We always used meters/sec for stream velocities and even slow moving streams (slower than my wavemakers at their lowest setting) were much higher than the flow numbers shown in the report. Meaning there may be a threshold that this theory brakes down.

But as Sean mentioned, this may be entirely too geeky for most peeps.

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Ah, but this begs the question of polyp density vs. branching.  I will have to check out the article when I get a chance but I get the impression that this stuff is not highly studied from a scientific perspective.  Your comparison to plant biology begs the question - are there growth hormone equivalents in coral? Interestingly, there is a tradition of using growth hormone in the food mix "Pappone" that is part of the "Blu Coral" method but the popular interpretation of that seems to be that is broken down into amino acids that are utilized by the coral (has to be a cheaper way to achieve that!).  Anyway, lots of odd anecdotal stuff out there but I haven't spent the time to dive into the actual scientific literature (or what there is of it).  Homework Brian or Andy!