The Montipora aquituberculata is a very unique species of plating,
whorling and scrolling Montipora. It has an incredibly screaming green
coloration. Edges can be colored white. The very unique part of this
coral, besides its intense coloration, is that this plating Montipora can
also grow vertical branches that coral biologist refer to as nodules.
The picture above is the typical growth forms that this coral grows
into. Below this text there are two pictures of the coral in two distinct
and extreme growth forms. One has a very large vertical branch or
nodule, while the other happens to have only a couple of small nodules.
All of the currently farmed colonies of these corals originated from captive
grown fragments distribued by Clayton Romi of Coral Gardens (Centre for
Coral Aquaculture). Email www.sps@coral-gardens.com .
Clayton orginally picked up the coral way back in 1994. Steve Tyree also
acquired a speciman of this coral back in the mid to late 1990's. In fact,
the first book Steve wrote about Reef Building Stony Corals, had a picture
of this species of coral on its cover. The coral in that shot was kept in a
reef that was run by Nelson Seeley. We do not remember where Nelson
acquired his particular speciman. It may have come from Steve Tyree's
or Clayton Romi's speciman. That cover file for the book photo was lost
unfortunately and the current editions of the book contain 6 other coral
photos. To see this book click on the link below.
http://www.dynamicecomorphology.com/depublish.htm
The potential this coral has to form exotic growth forms in captivity is
great. We would love to see someone produce a completely branching
growth form of this coral constructed of nodules. This is however a debate
about what conditions stimulate the coral to develop nodule growths in
addition to its plating form. Will strong light and strong current develop
nodule growths or will weak current and weak light develop the growths ?
In general the coral seems to require moderate ligthing with moderate
current. This coral is currently being farmed by Steve Tyree and it is
located within one of his 125 gallon naturally filtered Tri-Zonal EG reefs.
Fragments consist of plates attached to small rocks. ReefFarmers.com is
allowed to distribute 1 farmed fragment of this coral per month. Price is
currently $75 per small sized fragment. The monthly limited edition
reservation schedule can be found below.
Please note effective December 2007 we have changed the harvesting and
reservation schedule to bimonthly. This better matches the corals long term
growth rate in captivity.
TM
