Acropora millepora pink before.
Free swimming coral larvae(Acropora palmata) in a test tube.
As you can see,
my favorite corals are mainly sps with especially Acropora species.
The Acropora species above has nearly doubled in size in less than seven months.
In Part 4 of this series,
we examined the lighting requirements of a popular aquarium coral, Acropora.
Indeed, the most light used by an Acropora digitifera is about 20% of maximum sunlight at the water's surface.
When I asked about this I was told that it is too difficult to control temperature to successful grow Acropora Coral.
Ref COTS typically prefer to feed on branching and
table corals(e.g., Acropora), which are the same genera that are most vulnerable to bleaching.
Another reason to monitor larger reef areas is because current methods for monitoring individual corals long-term can potentially give inaccurate information,
particularly for branching corals(e.g., Acropora spp.).
Whatever the caveats, the results of testing done by
various researchers over the course of many years demonstrates that Acropora species do not need a great deal of light.
Most stony corals or SPS/LPS corals do not require plankton to survive although there are a few that are said to ingest phytoplankton and
those corals are Acropora, Siderastrea, Montipora, Porites, Astrangia, and Tubastraea.