Acropora Growth movie

Welcome to the Acropora Growth Movie Page

This page as been created to show how fast Acropora can grow, and how an amazing process it is.
To allow everyone to see that, and because looking an Acropora growing could be as exciting as looking grass growing, a picture has been taken every day on the same colonie, and some movies have been created to see months of process in seconds.

Pink Tips Acropora : this movie project (Falls 2000) is the longest (3 months - 93 pictures) and is about a colored tips Acropora to see how color evolves while the branches are growing. This movie allows to see different things :
- How a flat encruted young colony starts growing toward the lights and creating branches (about 30 mm high)
- How color evolves when the branches are growing (at the end, only branche tips are coloured)
- Growth rate difference between branches
- How and when first lateral polypes appeared
- How the Acropora colony repulsed a colony of soft coral (on the right of the pictures)

Colony Status when the first movie image has been taken & then 93 days later

Reef tank where the Colony is growing

WARNING : The movie will be built under your eyes, image by image until all the images are downloaded.
Then, the movie will run in a loop. Please wait until the process is complete.

Ultra light movie (240 Ko - 1 image every 10)
Quick movie overview (425 Ko - 1 image every 5)
Full Movie (1920 Ko - 93 images)

The Technology used to animate the pictures is Shockwave/Flash because of the image quality and the movie final compacity. If your browser needs the Shockwave plugin, just download it for free at http://www.macromedia.com

(Mouvements in the background are just teams of snails and hermit crabs playing soccer with a Pavona cactus fragment ;-))

Feel free to use this movie (for free !) as far as it is not for business purpose and if you keep the title. To use the movie, just wait for a full movie load in your browser, and then right-clic on it and save it on your disk using the "Save As" option that appears.

Green Acropora : here is a short movie I made with 25 daily shots (one per day during 25 days in a row) of a green Acropora growing in an aquarium. The real growth is about 10 mm. (Spring 2000)

You have two options :

Heavy file (over 600 ko) with reduced colors but in a .gif format that you can see with all bowsers More colorful and reduced file (350 Ko), but your browser needs the Shockwave plugin (download it at http://www.macromedia.com)

Enjoy them !

Best Regards

Fabrice POIRAUD-LAMBERT
http://mars.reefkeepers.net