Rare soft corals?

Thanks. I realize they difficulty of care. I've kept dendros, and scleros in the past with some success. 13 years ago when I started salt water these kinds of corals were more widely accessbile (sadly) because it was known that they didn't require "high lighting". So the thought was they could be kept in our small, immature captive reefs (along with our undergravel filters and standard flourescent light strips).

They certainly are beautiful. What struck me as interesting (and maybe even deceptive) was the quote on marinecenter.com. "...their care is not as difficult as it is often assumed." Then they go on to rate it only 3 out of 5 for difficulty of captive care.
 
First off I want to say this is a great thread. I find it funny because I have quite a few of the corals spoken about in here and I guess never realized that they were rare. I have a 24g nano and have 2 neon green sinularia that were given to me and are doing great, a purple nepthea that is just doing ok, when I switched over to MH lighting he wasn't doing so well and had to frag him to save him. I also have a bunch of blue anthelia (pulsing, sort of) that I got for free at my LFS and are growing like weeds throughout my tank. I would say that all of them are pretty easy to care for as I do nothing special for them, the sinularia's absolutely love the MH though and are thriving as are the blue anthelia's which are at the highest point in the tank. I'll try and get some pics up later.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7910466#post7910466 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Razzagas
reefnewbie54321:
This place appears to have green xenia:
http://www.aquacon.com/coralaquacultured.html
Click to expand...

Wow thanks for the link ... they have african blue xenia too. Looks like I will be ordering some.

As far as personal experience of "silk" or "carnation" corals no I don not have any but I would not like to experience killing a coral if you know what I mean. Check out the advanced topics section and find the thread about keeping dendros. We do not know how to take care of them and untill some one puts in the time and effort to figure it out the most success your going to have is a month ... 2 months if your lucky. If thats what you consider success then go for it. I also dont want you to take this as me being rude I just hate for people to think that they can keep things that are realy not meant for a captive system yet. I just wanted to point out some facts and give you a chance to read through the dendro thread before you made your decicion of buying one.

Just think about it, if we knew how to keep corals without light that would knock out the #1 cost. And carnation/silk corals come in such bright colors that even out compete SPS. I want to keep them just as bad as the next guy but I also dont want to waste my money on something tahts going to die in 3 weeks
 
The longest I've kept a Dendro alive is about 2 years which is a lot longer than the 2 months you're indicating. The 2 years was had by daily direct target feeding of my own fresh home grown 3 strains of phytoplankton and cyclopeeze. But to me 2 years is still not the kind of "success" I'd like. To date, my oldest coral my first bubble coral from about 11 years ago.

So anybody else have success with the Scleronepthea corals? Thanks for the comments reefnewbie but I'm not really inquiring about true dendros here. I'm hoping somebody has info about the Scleronepthea I pictured above.

The blue xenia is very cool. You'll enjoy it if you get some. However, they are very delicate and difficult shippers. My success with blue xenia came from a stalk purchased from a LFS. If anybody wants any fiji pink pulsing in the west Michigan area let me know. :)
 
I think that Clavularia (Clove Polyp) is a bit rare. One of the LFS around here has only had one colony in the last several years. I have seen them on some of the online sites but not often. This is especially true for the neon green center color morph.
 
Rare soft corals - List so far...

Rare soft corals - List so far...

I gotta thank chrisdaphish for starting this thread. :cool:

I took the liberty of compiling a list of what we have so far in this thread. I added some common names and scientific names to help with identification. These are all great corals (see exception notes below) and would make a fantastic shopping list for a softie dominated tank. A reef aquarium stocked with these would be well on it's way to a show tank or a Tank of the Month! ;)

Palythoa - Purple People Eaters

Xenia - Green Xenia

Cespitularia - (Blue Xenia?)

Anthelia - Blue Anthelia

Sarcophtyton - Neon Green Toadstools

Ricordea - Yellow, Pink, or Red

Lemnalia - Purple (Tree Coral)

Sinularia - Neon Green Finger Leather

Clavularia - Neon Center

*Dendronepthya - Carnation Coral

*Scleronepthea - Silk Coral

**Anthomastus - Antartic (temperate?)

*Dendronepthya and Scleronepthya have mysterious feeding requirements. These corals are non-photoynthetic so our kick-butt reef tank lighting is basically useless with these species. Peter Wilkens (aquarium hobby author) has reported some success with this coral using specific feeding techniques and regular substrate stirring. Other than this there are very few other hobbyists (see the RC thread refereced in a previous post) that have had success keeping Dendros for more than a number of months. This coral (as reefnewbie54321 suggested) should likely be avoided be for the average reef aquarium.

**The last one on the list, (the first one...mentioned by tinyreef) Anthomastus, may indeed be the rarest. I did not see a reference to it in all of my books and found only a bit of information after googling it. It seems to be an antartic species with mysterious feeding requirements. I have never seen it for sale - LFS or online.
 
Re: Rare soft corals - List so far...

Re: Rare soft corals - List so far...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7923342#post7923342 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sammy33
**The last one on the list, (the first one...mentioned by tinyreef) Anthomastus, may indeed be the rarest. I did not see a reference to it in all of my books and found only a bit of information after googling it. It seems to be an antartic species with mysterious feeding requirements. I have never seen it for sale - LFS or online.
Click to expand...
i doubt you'll ever see it for sale unless someone's got access to a bathyscaphe for commercial reasons.

i believe the only organization that even has it on display is the monterey aquarium, and i don't even believe it's a regular display (open to the public).

but they (one species, at least) do look a lot like baby sarcophytons imo. i think there's only 2~3 species in the genus(?). that's all i've found described. the other one that i've seen looks like an anemone/sarco (off the shores of south africa). very vibrant colors though, hot red!

other desireable softies probably depends on the current fad, which i believe is neon-green polyped sarcos/toadies. altho the ppe's have always been very pretty imo.

fad's come and go, e.g. acans, blood shrimp, purple acros, etc. it's like the stock market of reefing. :lol:
 
There's also "pulsing sinularia". From what I've read, the classification isn't clear, and it might be some kind of xeniiad but it's got a growth form like sinularia, and the small polyps pulse like xenia in low/no flow. It's not particularly colorful, but it seems relatively rare in that you don't hear about it often and is a pretty unique specimen. I have a video of a colony that I grew from a 1" frag over the last 2 years, if anyone's interested, but not sure how to post it up. I'd be happy to if someone could tell me how to do it. It shows the pulsing really well, I think.

Here's a couple other rc threads to prove that I'm not crazy (one with a pic that shows what it looks like): :)

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=27581&highlight

http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=75871

and one where the discuss what the classification might be:
http://www.wetwebmedia.com/xeniididfaqs.htm
 
Here's a picture that I just took of it:
IMG_2149edit.jpg
 
I almost purchased some pulsing sinularia but I guess it only pulses when its stressed (no flow/low flow) but it is pretty rare and I have only come across it once when I say it for sale in the buyers section.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7928622#post7928622 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by reefnewbie54321
I almost purchased some pulsing sinularia but I guess it only pulses when its stressed (no flow/low flow) but it is pretty rare and I have only come across it once when I say it for sale in the buyers section.
Click to expand...

Where did you hear that it only pulses when stressed? Mine seems to prefer very low flow. It grew much better when I moved it from a high to low flow area. Pulsing xenia doesn't pulse when it's in high flow either. I don't think it's stress related or, if anything, high flow is more stressful. If it was really stressed, you'd probably find that the polyps wouldn't be out at all.
 
Maybe it was just hear say but the person who was selling it in the buyers section said it didnt pulse like xenia and that it would only pulse when it was stressed and that it pulses all at once and not individual polyps.
 
That sounds like regular ol' sinularia where all the polyps retreat at the same time from stress or threat. This is much more like xenia where individual polyps or small groups pulse off and on spontaneously. Hope the buyers didn't get ripped off...
 
My pulsing sinularia is one of my fastest growing corals and it pulses extremely well. + I got a good deal on it, the LFS didn't know what it was ;-)
 
Here's the vid I took of the pulsing. Sorry it's kind of boring. I'm no video editor, so there's no soundtrack or anything. :lol: You can see groups of polyps pulsing and, if you look close, the individual polyps as well.

pulsing sinularia vid
 
Antho - video of it feeding
http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/living_species/default.asp?hOri=1&inhab=170


As for antho being temperate , I dont know if thats the case .. When I visited hawaii they had some in their aquarium , .. But then again it supposidly only grows in rich magnesium etc , and uses lava rock as a "substrate" ...


i would guess if they are close to those deposit's , steam vents etc would keep it fairly warm anyway ... Then again I have never completed a rubix cube ..

Its just what I have read , seen and my opinion .. I clean toilets for a living though.


Neat video either way . family guy time.
 
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