Red Soft Coral With Yellow Polyup's - no idea what it is, please help

[Alex Brown]

This was advertised at my local as red bush coral/red pussey coral. IMO, it is nither. I have pink pussey coral in my tank and the corals dont resemble each other. It also does not host the same colliflower polyup heads as that seen on a bush coral.

Daylight

Night (please excuse flash)

My observations so far. At the shop the coral stood up straight and polyups out in daylight hours, under halide. I put it in my tank last night. After 2 hours the lights went out and I noticed the coral stand up and polyups extend. This morning the polyups were tucked in as the lights came on, and are now starting to come back out.

Im not sure if this is non photosenthetic feeding at night, or if it does indeed feed through its zooxanthellae under daylight. I do however understand if it is the first, that these are extremely difficault to keep in captivity.

I have observed this coral for about 3 weeks at my LFS, and has shown positive growth. It actually arrived from Indonesia wrapped in wet newspaper...

BUSH CORAL

RED PUSSEY CORAL - Sinularia .sp

Dendronephthya

Now, could it be this species? I cannot find one single photo to match it when I google this name. It also has a lot less yellow polyups than the species Dendronephthea tends to have in the general photos I am finding.

Chili sponge?

 

[Alex Brown]

After hours and hours of research, I am pretty much sure this belongs to the Dendronephthya species.

Photos taken of it this evening with extended polyups. I also stirred the sand bed immediately after reading information regarding feeding this species. Please, any help would be grately aprechiated.

I am not sure what the LFS feeds thier coral tanks, however I am 100% sure they do not know how to care for such a special coral. It had a rough time coming from Indonesia wrapped in wet newspaper. It spent about 3 weeks in the shop coral tank. Now I am in two minds;

Yes it cost a lot of money and I am out of my leauge with this coral, but 100% prepaired to spend my time reasearching its needs and to be honest, I would like to experiemnt and monitor this coral to hopefully provide some sort of usefull information on this species in the hobby.

Or, send it back to the shop if they would take it back. I was sold this item as red bush coral/red pussey coral. However, I would hate to think that this coral might end up in someones elses tank who might not have scratched the surface on its species, and it waste away and die.

 

[Alex Brown]

Stereonephthya

 

[Alex Brown]

This brings new hope, Google image search Nephthyigorgia.

I would say some of those pictures are identicle to my coral. Whats strange is it then relates back to Chili Coral in a number of pictures and text. Chili, being recomended feeding on products such as Marine Snow.

 

[dendro982]

1. More about ID stereonephthya: link 1, pdf, pendulum polyps, link 2, pdf.

2. Tropical chili coral, Nephthyigorgia spp.:
There is thread about it a little time back, some people keep it without additional feeding (but with feeding the fish and other corals) in sps tanks with corresponding water quality.

IMHO, Marine now is too small. Take a look on how the chili coral handles Cyclop Eeeze, ~800 micron:

3. Dendronephthya, transparent branches with long frosty rods, sclerites. I'm not an expert, but flow around this coral, keeping food available to it for prolonged time, works for me so far (short term). Wavemaker helped the others, together with flow 40x tank volume per hour or more, lower than usual temperature (75F and even less), continuous feeding and filtration able to clean water after that.

More info is in threads on this forum, in Dendronephthya study group, (posts of mcox33 in particular, somewhere around pp 16-19), C. Stottlemire article, Jens Kallmeyer post was particularly helpful for me, this one with amount of food amount of food and others.
You may start with flow and feeding, while continue your research. I'm hesitant to leave non-photosynthetic corals without frequent feedings for days.

4. Bush coral (orangeish, with no visible sclerites on the body):
take a look on this thread, if yours looks alike, advices on its keeping are there.

5. Pusey coral (pink with darker oral disks) looks to me as scleronephthya ( link and pdf files above. Food larger than for dendronephthya, but smaller than for chili coral, zooplankton based or Fauna Marin foods. Large amounts of food, continuous feeding, high flow.

HTH and good luck!

 

[Alex Brown]

Thank you very much dendro.

In your opinion, what species would you say my specimin looks like?

Also, should I get it out the direct light, and either onto a slope or upside down?

 

[dendro982]

Sorry, I wasn't able to find this information and other reefers didn't answer it too when were asked. Most online information is about similarly looking, but not tropical Alcyonium glomeratum, A. palmatum and others.

Chili coral (Nephthyigorgia spp.) is one of the most difficult corals that I have. Even when my oldest is alive for more than 3 years, it was closed for prolonged periods. You can find more from more successful reefers with sps water quality systems in the Chili coral thread here and in refugium-like systems in similar thread on Ultimate Reef (uk).

Light: it is not bother some chili corals for other reefers, but all mine closed in the morning when the lights turned on (not MH, PC), within few minutes. In the dark tank (only ambient light similar to northern exposure room) they were open most of the day and night for a feeding.

Upside down or not: you may try, it worked for some people.
Only using temporary hold like super glue gel, not epoxy putty. This way you always can remove coral if it wasn't good for it.

I see that your coral has vertical trunk with branches, not palm with fingers shape or long trunk with all branches coming out at once, at the same level. I have all 3:
Mine vertical closed for a long time after being mounted upside down and I had to remove rock from the tank to break putty with chisel.
Finger shaped mini-chili (in your first post) behaved as being fluid: it moved on the sides of support down, separating in the middle.
Tree shaped looked like the top was too heavy: trunk elongated and elongated, thinning at the top, until coral reached bottom. No positive effects of hanging upside down were noticed, no matter what explanation in support of it was.

 

[Alex Brown]

Thanks for all your help. Hopefully this thread will help other in the future. For me however, I returned the coral to Maiden Head aquatics this afternoon.

Cheers, Alex.

 

[PauChi]

Hey Alex,

I have a feeling it's some form of the Scleronepthea family. I can be very sure it's not Dendronephthya spp.

Paul