Browned out Acro rejuvenation - experiment #1
 

I think some of us get an acro that browns out and/or growth stalls. The acros I have had like this had a uniform color without any light colored flesh at the axial polyps (growth tips) and there was little to no polyp extension.
I have had great success cutting the colony off the encrusting and growing the crust. The encrusting is loaded with axial polyps and once you remove the coral "tree" itself, there are no dominant axial polyps to inhibit the growth of the polyps in the encrusting and they explode into a new beautifully colored coral with many growing tips and amazing growth. I have done this with:
- Miyagi Tort
- Tri-Color Tort
- Miami Orchid Acro
- Purple Rain acro
- Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort (currently in the beginning stage)

For this test I want to see what happens when just the Axial polyps are removed from a coral colony's branches. I found 2 browned out corals (uniform color and no polyp activity) - Thanks to Kris @NewJack I cut all of the non-growing "growth tips" from both corals. To make sure I got the whole axial polyp from each branch, I tried to cut the branches just below the first radial polyp. Each of these corals have now had ALL the tips pruned.
I expect the tips to grow new axial polyps along with some of the axial polyps in the encrusting to begin to produce.
Cheers! Mark
I have attached a pic. to show how ugly these corals have become. I will post tank pics. of them shortly.

Has anyone else tried this? Any thoughts on results?

Here is a pic of the smaller of the 2 corals that had the tips removed. Lighting is t5 6500k in this tank. I have 2 reefs running side by side with shared sump. This coral is in the left tank so we will call it "lefty". The other coral that was pruned is in the right tank under MarsAqua 300w LED.
Cheers! Mark

And a picture of "Righty"

This coral that is in the same dormant condition will become the "control" and I will not do anything to it.

It has been a week and all 3 corals still look the same.
Cheers! Mark

I’m calling you “mad scientist” from now on

Im gonna need more tanks

Def a fun experiment!

I have a granulosa that got mad and stalled out a year ago, didnt lose color, but expelled terminal coralites and just sat.

Then I cut one of the old terminal coralite sites off... and it sprouted a new terminal coralite and resumed growing.

So I repeated this all over the coral, a few at a time, and now the whole thing is back on track growing as a colony.

Interested to think that the presence of terminal coralites, even if they are no longer operational, basically stalls the coral.

That is very cool! Even though corals are animals, they behave a lot like plants/trees. I was reading some of the GARF stuff and one of the things they kept saying was acros like to be cut (the more pruning the better!)
Cheers! Mark

It makes sense they like to be cut. In natural reefs, they are constantly being broken by all the creatures of the reef and actually propagate this way. I like your experiment!

"Lefty" is starting to show signs of life. The cut ends now have tiny fluorescent dots under actinic as polyps are starting to form on the tips of the branches. I would really like to see some activity in the encrusting.
Cheers! Mark

Both coral's now have growing tips and the coral in the right tank has polyp extension on the growing tips.
Cheers! Mark

Pic. of lefty. Overall color is looking brighter also.
There is no visible change of the control coral.
Cheers! Mark

Very cool test! Following along. :)

Almost 1 month - Lefty

Update with pics please?

Here ya go. Almost 6 weeks. Both of the pruned corals have great growth on the tips as you can see by the lighter colored flesh on "Lefty". The control is still dormant. "Righty" was doing so well that we cut the tops again and made 3 frags in an effort to try to get the encrusting to show signs of growth. I think the experiment is a success.
Pic. is under white light - no actinic

Excellent! Time to get out those snippers and give everything a haircut!

but seriously, before people do exactly that. Maybe run some new carbon for a few days if you are really going to go and get wild snipping stalled SPS!