Could this be a dendrophyllia arbuscula or similar?

Aquabucket

Premium Member
Could these be a type of dendro and not a tubastraea as labled by my wholesaler. It would not be the first time they got a name wrong.

They are starting to branch out just like I've seen with pics of dendrophyllia arbuscula and others. They never had the common solid base that I see with tubastrea corals. When I first got these they consisted of several stalks anchored to a rock at various points. I know this pic is not the best but here it is:

32290SunCoral01.jpg


They don't look like any of the tubastreas I have seen and are more of a branching type coral as opposed to the more colonial tubastreas. As you can see there are some new polyps sprouting up on the rocks and some stalks are forming new branches with polyps. I spot feed each head almost every day with mysis.

Here are some pics of dendros I found on the web that strongly resemble what my coral looked like before carefully chiseling the individual stalks off the rock they came on ~ the first 2 pics looks almost exactly the same as the original piece I received including some of the colorful growths along the rock seen in the second picture:

preview3.jpg


27.jpg


CorBkCh3htm66.jpg


flower_a41.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nevermind. Based on the size of the polyps I've determined it may be Cladopsammia gracilis. The largest polyp when opened is about the size of a nickel. I have just read that dendros get much larger in size.

Cladopsammia gracilis:

dendro-rosa-sep-06.jpg


Hopefully someone can help me get a positive ID.
 
Last edited:
I forgot to mention ~ according to my wholesaler the coral in question was collected from Viet Nam. The polyps continue to grow larger and it can eat like a pig ~ taking several feedings of mysis a day. Each polyp can gobble several whole mysis at a time. After 20 minutes or so they are ready for more. I was under the impression that tubastrea corals would not do this.
 
Back
Top