[Caesar Augustus]

I just couldn,t help myself at my LFS so I got three cool monti frags (Blue carpet, pink ruffles, and purple tree) well, the scientific genus I realize but you get the picture. I've got a well established 55 with about 450 watts of t-5's on it. I put the blue in low current and towards the bottom, pink in moderate current in the middle, and the tree higher and moderate current. Sound good to you? I've never had them before but they seem to be doing well. Any Monti experts out there?
Augustus

[charlie]

Sounds like you did good!! Got any pics for us???

[Caesar Augustus]

I've only had them a few days but yea I'll get some pic's for ya

I have five morphs of digitata - some (the pink and the green) need only 175 watts of metal halde near the top of the tank to maintain their colors. A bue, a purple and a salmon/orange have coloration like an on/off switch. Slam them with 400-1000watts and they are brilliant colored, put them at the btoom of the tank or in less light and they are brown. The purple does have a brown with purple tips stage at the bottom of a 24" tank with 400 watt halided, but is solid purple at the top.

[kevinpo]

Now those are some creative common names
Montipora species are one of the best SPS corals to start out with. They are highly adaptable to a wide variety of lighting, flow, and water conditions. Their color is also highly variable depending on the distance from the light source. For example M. digitata can vary from brown, to brown with dark purple tips, to all purple, to light lavender by just moving the coral a few inches. Most of the Montipora corals are fast growers achieving 1-1.5" growth a month under ideal conditions.

Moderate flow.
Moderate light.
Calcium 400ppm
8 dKH, meq/L 2.97
Magnesium 1200ppm (or 3 times your calcium ppm).
Nitrate 10ppm or less

HTH,
Kevin

[vtec si]

Sound like a great score! I would like to see some pic's. The more light you give them the faster they grow! FME

Martin