This series of photos shows the amazingly rapid growth of a fragment of a delicate and light-skeletoned foilose Montipora species. Species in this genus are fast-growing, attractive, and easily fragmented for propagation efforts. They are tolerant of widely variant light and current regimes, with the amount of "tightness" between the lamina determined mostly by the amount and type of water flow to which they are exposed. One of the primary concerns with these corals is the presence of predatory obligate dendronotilid nudibranchs that can consume the tissue of Montipora species, leaving white areas that look as though they have been bleached.

Photos by Chris Green (newkie). Text by Eric Borneman.