xmas tree?
- Thread starter dad
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C
coralbeauty
Guest
I have a nice rock with only about 12 worms. As I have experienced and read, the key is giving the coral enough light and giving the filter feeding worms enough phytoplankton or whatever you feed your filter feeders. Mine has done very well. My coral has expanded covering even more of the rock and I have a new worms growing.
Good luck!
Connie
Good luck!
Connie
salisbury a d
Member
Since I have never had these corals I will type info from a book.
First off they are listed as hard to keep corals for the expert.
The Genus Porites
Link, 1807
The name derives from the Latin word porus meaning pore and the Greek ites which when added to the end of a word denotes similarity. The colonize into many shapes and many colors, but basically they are brown. Green, red. blue, purple and yellow are often seen. Polyps are rarely opened during the daytime. Their tentacles are tiny and are barely visible. Calices are uniformly shaped ( thus the honycomb designation), sometimes even circular, with common walls. The genus is destributed completely around the temperate and tropical zones where corals are to be found. They achieve this massive distribution by reproducing sexually. The female's eggs are fertilized internally bysperm released by other porites of the same species. The eggs incubate and when sufficiently developed are released as free swimming larvae. They attach to the first solid thing they strike, be it another hard coral or a piece of floating styrofoam. The luchy ones are carried on a piece of wood in the wrm current to their new habitat where thye eventually fall off their transport and establish themselves properly.
The study of these corals from a systematic point of view is impossible. You can only study them geographically, thus you can differentiate between al of the porites of the Madive Islands and give them valid names only to find the identical coral a thousand miles away. There are 125 species record3d and no one knows haw many are valid because current techniques for identifying corals are insufficient. Molecular biology will probably solve the porites problem for us. Up to now scientists have relied upon the shape of the colony but they all know that such a reliance is probably faulty.
Many years ago I brought back two species from the Caribbean island of Nassau. The coral lived for a few months in my aquarium but slowly died as the lack of trace elements took its toll. Bu7t the big surprise for me was the explosion of beautifully colored fan worms. At that time I was in the tropical fish business so I imported large quantities of these porites, almost all of which were ifected with these colorful worms. Imports of porites from other parts of the world also produced these worms which had bored into their skeleton. I called these porited Living Rock because not only were the corals living but so were the worms. The modern name for these infestedporites is Christmas Tree Worm Rock. When they grow in staghormshaped colonies, they becom refuges for small reef animals like fish and crabs.
These are VERY DIFFICULT corals to maintain. They require intense ligh 8-10 hours a day, extremely agitated water movments and lots of room. Those requirements are not conducive to a beautiful mini reef aquarium!
The colors of porites are universal. They are found in purple orange pink red yellow green brown cream and even white. Unlike most stony corals, porites shed periodically. This is probably the food eaten by the fan worms. it also has something to do with water movement because the faster the water moves around them the less they shed.
Since all porites require basically the same care and their identification is so tenuous, idntifications through photographs is the acceptable method used in the mini reef aquarium hobby.If the porite coral is to die so does the x-mas tree worms.
Hope this helps.
Adam
First off they are listed as hard to keep corals for the expert.
The Genus Porites
Link, 1807
The name derives from the Latin word porus meaning pore and the Greek ites which when added to the end of a word denotes similarity. The colonize into many shapes and many colors, but basically they are brown. Green, red. blue, purple and yellow are often seen. Polyps are rarely opened during the daytime. Their tentacles are tiny and are barely visible. Calices are uniformly shaped ( thus the honycomb designation), sometimes even circular, with common walls. The genus is destributed completely around the temperate and tropical zones where corals are to be found. They achieve this massive distribution by reproducing sexually. The female's eggs are fertilized internally bysperm released by other porites of the same species. The eggs incubate and when sufficiently developed are released as free swimming larvae. They attach to the first solid thing they strike, be it another hard coral or a piece of floating styrofoam. The luchy ones are carried on a piece of wood in the wrm current to their new habitat where thye eventually fall off their transport and establish themselves properly.
The study of these corals from a systematic point of view is impossible. You can only study them geographically, thus you can differentiate between al of the porites of the Madive Islands and give them valid names only to find the identical coral a thousand miles away. There are 125 species record3d and no one knows haw many are valid because current techniques for identifying corals are insufficient. Molecular biology will probably solve the porites problem for us. Up to now scientists have relied upon the shape of the colony but they all know that such a reliance is probably faulty.
Many years ago I brought back two species from the Caribbean island of Nassau. The coral lived for a few months in my aquarium but slowly died as the lack of trace elements took its toll. Bu7t the big surprise for me was the explosion of beautifully colored fan worms. At that time I was in the tropical fish business so I imported large quantities of these porites, almost all of which were ifected with these colorful worms. Imports of porites from other parts of the world also produced these worms which had bored into their skeleton. I called these porited Living Rock because not only were the corals living but so were the worms. The modern name for these infestedporites is Christmas Tree Worm Rock. When they grow in staghormshaped colonies, they becom refuges for small reef animals like fish and crabs.
These are VERY DIFFICULT corals to maintain. They require intense ligh 8-10 hours a day, extremely agitated water movments and lots of room. Those requirements are not conducive to a beautiful mini reef aquarium!
The colors of porites are universal. They are found in purple orange pink red yellow green brown cream and even white. Unlike most stony corals, porites shed periodically. This is probably the food eaten by the fan worms. it also has something to do with water movement because the faster the water moves around them the less they shed.
Since all porites require basically the same care and their identification is so tenuous, idntifications through photographs is the acceptable method used in the mini reef aquarium hobby.If the porite coral is to die so does the x-mas tree worms.
Hope this helps.
Adam