can some ID this for me...

You have a nice echinophyllia there. What ridiculous name you want to slap on it depends on who you talk to :)
 
It looks similar to an Alien eye and the Watermelon Echino. Never the less, it's an Echinophyllia sp.

Part of the reasons for putting a name on a coral is to keep the lineage straight, so as frags get passed along people can keep track of who has that exact coral, and what it might look like under different conditions.
Like mothra said, at this point, slapping a name on it is kind of useless.
 
That's the whole problem with all of the coral nick names. And then when you get a real popular one, all of a sudden it starts getting used for other corals, sometimes 'look alikes' from the 'original', sometimes completely different species, then it gets really confusing.

Back before echinos became popular there was really only 1 'alien eye' and it came from Tubs (the lineage might go further back than him even). Now that they are being collected it's become obvious that there are some crazy color morphs, many of them have the 'alien eye' look, which is really (nowadays) any bright yellow or green coralite with surrounding tissue of a contrasting color. I've seen 'alien eye' used to describe everything from zoanthids, to blastos. So you can kind of see where I'm headed with this example.

On a tangent I would use this as part of an argument to retire many of the LE corals that are out there. Sure you might not be able to get the exact coral very easily, but for some species (especially echinophyllia and micromussa for example) there are A LOT of colorful variants that are as nice or nicer than the origial. There is a time and place for everything though and some corals truly are unique.

[/end rant]
 
well said mothra... can't argue and Randy thats only reason I wanted to know because I paid good money for it and wanted to know if that was worth paying for....I like that frag a lot and just wanted a name for him but just like what you guys are saying its useless to slap a name for it......thanks guys
 
My opinion of your coral is that it is NOT one of the original more infamous named echinos (so I hope it was not sold to you as such) but it is one of the very nice 'other' echinos that are out there - so if you paid a modest price for it, it was probably worth it (only you can answer that :)).


Randy makes a good point about tracking lineage - which is good to do even if you don't give your coral some fancy pants name. LPS in particular tend to change appearance quite a bit under different conditions, so this is good stuff to know.
 
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