Montipora Digitata/ Finger Coral: Complete Care Guide
- Jan 29, 2022
- Anshika Mishra
- 1995 0 0
In this article, we will be learning about the Montipora Digitata, also popular as Finger Coral.
Prices: You will normally spend about $30 to get a frag from one of these.
Care Level: Moderate! It is not very hard to take care of them as long as they are going into a nice reef tank, and it is also good for beginners who want to get into SPS corals. They are much harder versions of SPS corals. So, if you always take good care of LPS corals and want to move up to the SPS world, the Montipora Digital is a great one to start with.
Water Parmeter
- Temperature: 72-78 degrees Fahrenheit
- dKH: 8-12
- pH: 8.1-8.4
- Salinity: 1.023-1.025
Appearance
These coral have a very pretty lime-green body with bright orange and red polyps coming out from all over. It is a truly eye-catching coral to have, especially when it has a lot of polyps all over it.
Diet
They are photosynthetic. So, they will be eating off the lights, similar to Zoanthids. However, experts recommend spot-feeding to almost every kind of SPS coral because they will thrive off of it. It also helps them grow a lot faster and keeps their color and health green.
So, feeding this coral couple of times a week will really help out. With spot feeding, you want to put some kind of liquid food in the tank, whether you are pouring liquid in the powerheads to just blow all around the tank or you can actually shut your powerheads off, get a little syringe and squirt it right on the corals. This way, the corals will come out and eat it.
Oyster Feasts, Reefroids, and many other types of powdered food for coral which you can pour into your reef aquarium. Any of such food would help in the Finger coral's growth.
Origin
Most of the time, they are aquaculture these days. So whenever you get one, it will mostly be from somebody who grew it in their tank, but originally they come from the indo-pacific area, mainly from the great barrier reef.
Venomous
While they can sting, they usually lose up against any other coral because they just don't have as powerful of a sting. So, you want to keep it somewhere it has plenty of room to grow. It can grow beside other Montipora, but you should not put it beside corals like Galaxy coral or an Anemone that could attack it and sting the fire out of it.
Placement
You can keep them anywhere. These corals will grow up to the lights. That's how their branches begin to extend.
Putting them higher in the tank will provide them with good open space to grow up. But, unfortunately, it is also where most of the current is.
Current
You want to keep this coral in medium to high current. Most of the time, people put their SPS coral in the intense wind because it might help them feed well, and it also keeps detritus, and hair algae from going on them, because once that algae start to grow on their skin, it is tough for them to recover from it.
So, make sure to put them in a high current spot. It will help it feed well, along with keeping its skin healthy.
Lighting
It is recommended to keep them in good high lighting. You cannot go cheaply out on illumination when it comes to SPS corals, and they require just much more intense lighting to stay alive in the tank. A 100 and above PAR level is necessary to keep an SPS coral alive and thriving.
Fragging
It is easy to frag Montipora. It is not super strong that you cannot get a pair of scissors and clip its branches off. Normally, it is pretty good about clipping in certain spots. But, it is best to cut the larger pieces rather than, the smaller ones as the chance of recovery is much higher.
If you start cutting little bitty tiny pieces of them off, they will often end up bleaching. So, make sure you are cutting a good solid piece off so that it can heal and recover fine.
Acclimating
Acclimating this coral is also important to keep an SPS coral. They are sensitive to new tanks and could lead be bleaching if not adjusted properly.
So, double the acclimation time that you usually do for your fish. Also, check your lights to have an acclimation period. Many of them have that ability where it is not being put into 100% lighting. It will gradually get used to it by acclimating and eventually grow habitual.
Keep the Levels in Check
In Montioporas, you want to look for lots of Polyps all over the coral. If you look up pictures, you can see them almost always. You can barely see the little lime green body on them because they have so many polyps all over them.
You want to look out for all of those polyps being out of the coral, all over its body. You also will notice some little tips on the edges, and it is okay as it signifies good growth. However, if you start to see white spots on other parts of the coral, then it's time to worry.
Normally, there is something wrong with the water level. Maybe it is your calcium, kH, iodine, and strontium. So, if you want to have a healthy SPS coral, keep these levels in check all the time.
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