reefraf

I am building out my SPS dominated reef. My question is when most people refer to a colony, are they just refering to an sps piece fully grown out?

The second part of that is do all frags grow into colonies? For example i have a nice birds nest that is the exact shape as a half circle and 5 inches in diameter - i assume this is a colony. My staghorn acrapora is nice, but it grows up and sprouts a few branches - but does not look like it will ever become that half circle colony, it ...