Is this Dendrophyllia Arbuscula?

[cocoaandme]

I got these from an lfs that just labelled them as dendros. I believe they are Dendrophyllia Arbuscula but I have been seeing some people calling them Dendrophyllia Fistula or Cladopsammia. I have also seen some pictures of a similar coral but not as branching (although more branching than a "normal" tubastrea) which people seem to disagree on whether it is the same as this type.

When I got them they were not opening but I have managed to coax them open using reef chili. I target feed and hybrid broadcast/target feed them.
Any thoughts?

 

[Pearson]

Looks to me like a sun coral.

 

[cocoaandme]

Looks to me like a sun coral.

By sun coral do you mean a tubastrea? Sun coral is a just a common name and does not necessarily describe one species. Although it is commonly used to refer to different species of tubastrea. The common tubastrea that you will see form clusters while this specimen is branching. The exception being that black tubastrea branches.

This would be a common clustering tubastrea:

Typically corals are identified by their skeleton. Tubastrea typically have a very dense skeleton whereas dendrophyllia have a lighter skeleton. The coral that I have shown in my first picture has a light skeleton.

Here is an article which identifies it as cladopsammia:
http://************.com/2012/11/08/cladopsammia-gracilis/

And in this thread people are labeling it Dendrophyllia Arbuscula:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2036901

 

[stunreefer]

I bought one a few months back (identical to your picture) that was imported as Tubastrea australensis :lol:

It's not Cladopsammia sp., at least not the same coral identified as such in the RB article. I have three colonies of those as well and they're a very different animal. Regardless they're the same care as most large polyp NPC.

 

[cocoaandme]

Interesting. So have these been imported from Australia? I didn't think they looked like the ones in the RB article either but I can't seem to find any positive ID on them. How are yours doing? I have heard some people complain about theirs not opening.

Mine seem to be getting better:

I hope this is not just a temporary flash of brilliance.

 

[stunreefer]

Mine is doing well. When I initially received it the coenosarc was heavily damaged, but started to regrow quickly.

 

[cocoaandme]

Oh very nice! I'm glad yours are doing so well. I have another one that didn't look very good. The coenosarc was strange. It was as if it were just getting thinner and sinking into the skeleton which was strange. But the polyps are now coming out and feeding so I hope it should start getting better.

 

[cocoaandme]

Ok so I decided to do some real research into this and it seemed that corals that look like the one pictured above are either referred to as Dendrophyllia Arbuscula or as Tubastrea Coccinea. However of course these are from non-scientific sources such as forums and in some cases wetwebmedia.

So I started looking into scientific journals and came accross this article by Sentoku and Ezaki which compares the growth form and skeletal formations ofr Dendrophyllia Arbuscula and Tubastrea Coccinea. Awesome!


Coral Reefs
March 2012, Volume 31, Issue 1, pp 67-74
Regularity in budding mode and resultant growth morphology of the azooxanthellate colonial scleractinian Tubastraea coccinea
Authors: A. Sentoku, Y. Ezaki

Here is a link to the abstract and you can "peak inside" to see a diagram of the budding arrangement with respect to septa.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00338-011-0808-5

Here is a picture from the "peak inside" that shows the budding of corallites with respect to septa in Dendrophyllia Arbuscula:

I have university access to journals so I was able to download the whole thing which was very informative. I am not sure about copy right laws pertaining to this article so I don't think I should post the other pictures from the article but they show side by side pictures of the two corals which demonstrated that coccinea has a much denser branching form where as arbuscula has a much more sparse branching form with longer branches between buddings.

They both seem to share a budding geometry in which new buds sprout from the 4 primary septa. But as I said before the overall growth form is different in terms of the length of branches.

So I am fairly convinced at this point that the coral I have is a Dendrophyllia Arbuscula. I have also looked at a piece of skeleton cross section that I took away from the base. I will see if I can take more without harming the coral to get a better view of the septa and budding cites.

 

[SoLiD]

Thanks for this information.

 

[stunreefer]

So I started looking into scientific journals and came accross this article by Sentoku and Ezaki which compares the growth form and skeletal formations ofr Dendrophyllia Arbuscula and Tubastrea Coccinea. Awesome!

Score :thumbsup:

Thanks for sharing, Richard.