Coral Identification?

[CoreyWoulds]

I bought this coral from my LFS and the owner could not tell me what the name of it was. I need to know the name so I can properly place it at the right light and flow level. Right now its under two 65 watt compact fluorescents 10K/Actinic so it has lots of light. Its at a medium to strong flow. I know its some kind of Acro but exactly which I don't know. I put it in these condition thinking like most acros it would love the bright light. But the polyps don't really come out far and I don't want my 30$ frag to die.

 

[MikeG]

Looks like it could be a. torttosa, cali tort maybe? I am not that good on id. I can tell you placement though, high light high flow.

As for the 65W PC's, I would say that is pretty low light as far as coral lighting goes. How long has the coral been in the tank? What are your parameters especially alk, salinity, and temp?

 

[CoreyWoulds]

Every other coral in my tank has been flourishing, and the parameters are good, temp is a little high because of the weather but around 79-80 degrees about 90% of the time. The tank is small (20 long/20 lb. sand/10 lb. rock so about 17gallons H2O) with and lots of inverts and three fish, pair of clowns and 6 line. So water quality is good because I take care of it but it does fluctuate. It has only been in the tank about a month. I glued it to the rock it is on now two weeks ago and it went through a bit of stress while I did it. So realize that I should not expect crazy growth but when I had the frag in the sand bed when I first got it the polyps seems to come out on the side with less light. Then when I moved it they pretty much stopped coming out at all except for the occasional one or two. So it could just be adjusting to its new spot and light and flow, etc. or is it possible to have an acropora that prefers lower light. Which raises a question: what are acro polyps responsible for, filter feeding or photosynthetic?

 

[bossreef]

I have a frag that looks like your middle photo. I don't recall the name at the moment.

The frag is 8" from the top of the water and 20" from my AI LEDs. LEDs are set around 50%. The frag does have some PE, but not much. Interestingly enough... several months ago, I cut off a branch of the same frag and placed that frag on my frag rack. My frag rack is 4" from the top of the water.

The frag on the frag rack looks completely different than the original frag. The frag on the frag rack turned green and blue and has about double the PE of the other frag. Both frags have high water movement.

 

[Jocko]

Can you describe your water flow setup? Do you have any sort of wavemaker kind of action?

 

[CoreyWoulds]

I have 3 power heads 2 - 425 koralias and a 400 gph RIO plus turbulence from protein skimmer and another filter, so there is a lot of flow in the tank. This was my first thought when I was anxious for change in my new frag, so I increased the flow to that spot by adjusting a nearby head but it has only been two days since. But hoping the extra flow will coax them out.