Plating Rainbow Montipora??

Is it possible that some of the photosynthetic algae from other SPS's migrated to the regrowth area?

I'm excited to see pics and progress of this piece.

I have rainbow encrusting monti that started to plate off a rock, it now has a good 2 inch rim growing straight off rock ledge to open water, never had a pink turn to rainbow though, could just be going through a new growth color stage.

I couldn't find my camera, so here are some horrid camera phone shots:

Did it have any stress or something you noticed to trigger the change?

Gonna necropost on this one.

This has actually happened to me before. A montipora almost died then came back a different color. In my experience it eventually returned to it's original color. It actually went from orange to green, then back to orange. The montipora was stung by a neighboring coral in my case. Torch to be specific. Hard to believe vertical transmission would be a possibility during an attack. Especially from a more potent coral to a less potent one. I had green montipora in the tank as well, and assumed zooxanthellae were gathered from that coral somehow.

I've used vertical transmission before to create interesting colors on zoanthids, but the colors faded when direct contact with the colony containing the introduced zooxanthellae was removed. Some hybrid polyps were able to survive and retain zooxanthellae if mats were grafted, but new growth would always be one color pattern or another.

Interestingly enough, the coenosarc and the outer epidermis of my montipora turned green. I don't see any green in the coenosarc of your montipora.

What are the corals closest to it? It is scientific fact that coral larvae can form symbiosis with zooxanthellae. It is an extremely fascinating hypothesis that a regenerating coral could form symbiosis in such a fragile state.

I wish we lived closer to the ocean. Then we could more accurately do research of our own on zooxanthellae transfer.

Edited by Pete Moss - January 27 2015 at 1:14pm