Dendrophyllia or Dendronephthya?

[CarmieJo]

I got this frag that was ID'd as dendrophyllia. The clerk told me that it was related to sun coral and would do fine under my PC lights. He also said that it would need regular feeding because it was not photosynthetic.

I came home, acclimated it, and glued the frag to a piece of rubble. It looked pretty good yesterday, nicely inflated and standing upright.


Today it is has almost come off the rock I glued it to and is a little droopy. Should I use another technique besides glue?



In the meantime I have been researching it and think that it is actually a dendronephthya. The good news is that it does not need lots of light but most every thing I've looked at says they are very difficult to keep alive.

What do you think? Which is it?

(PS, I couldn't decide which forum, LPS or Soft Coral, to post this in. I am so confused!)

[Stevej72]

Scientific Name Dendrophyllia sp.
Common Name "Tree Coral"
and
Scientific Name Tubastrea sp.
Common Name "Cave Coral"

Color Red to deep purple skeletons with expanded polyps in various colors of yellow, red green or black.


Plate 72. Tree Coral (Dendrophyllia sp.) with polyps expanded and withdrawn.


Plate 73. Cave Coral (Tubastrea sp.) with tentacles withdrawn.


Distinguishing Characteristics
These types of coral do not contain symbiotic zooxanthellae in their tissues, and their red to deep purple appearance is solely due to their own pigments. Not requiring light for food energy, these corals populate the roofs and walls of caves or under ledges where other hard corals will not survive. They obtain their energy solely by feeding on zooplankton, and the sight of their large, colorful polyps and tentacles expanded for feeding can be spectacular. They grow as either solitary or small branching forms and therefore are not reef-forming, and their skeletons are light and porous. Members of these and related groups can occur in very deep and cold water throughout the world, unlike the reef-forming corals which are primarily restricted to the tropics in warm sunlit water.

Species of Dendrophyllia are often differentiated from Tubastrea in the field on the basis of the smaller size of their calyces and by a greater tendency for branching and forming arborescent colonies. However, these are unreliable charactersistics for accurate identification. since some Dendrophyllia grow as small clumps similar to Tubastrea. Also, both types may occur in a variety of colors. although Tubastrea is inaccurately considered to be primarily red. The two genera can be differentiated from the structure of the septa of their cleaned skeletons. In Dendrophyllia,the calyces follow the Pourtales Plan wherein the septa fuse in groups of three together at the center of the calyx. Tubastrea conversely shows no central fusion of the septa.

Family Dendrophylliidae
Scientific Name Turbinaria mesenterina
Common Name "Vase Coral"
Color Pale to yellowish brown or greenish brown.


Plate 69. Vase Coral (Turbinaria mesenterina)

Distinguishing Characteristics
Small colonies of this distinctive species look like small plates on stalks which are attached to the substratum. As a colony grows it becomes more and more vase-like, with a thin lip around a central depression. The lip of the vase can be quite convoluted and the overall structure is often very beautiful. Colonies can form large vases standing up to 1 m above the substratum, to which they are always firmly attached to resist wave turbulence. Polyps on the interior of the vase are uniformly about 2 mm in diameter and are evenly spaced on the coral's surface.

Habitat
The Vase Coral is usually found at. the base or lower sections of slopes and in relatively turbid water subject to sedimentation. Because of its high density and firm attachment to the substratum, it is often seen in wave exposed, turbid areas where other species are mostly excluded .

Copied from
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/research...CorBkIndex.htm

hth
Steve

[Stevej72]

The ahermitic coral Dendrophyllia sp. with a camouflauged nudibranch




Image ID: reef0333, The Coral Kingdom Collection
Location: University of Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology
Credit: Photo Collection of Dr. James P. McVey, NOAA Sea Grant Program
http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/reef/reef0333.htm

[Stevej72]

What color are the expanded polyps?

[CarmieJo]

Originally Posted by Stevej72

What color are the expanded polyps?

They are pink as well.

[Stevej72]

the Dendrophyllia expanded polyps should be a yellow color.
Im still looking

[Stevej72]

Did it look like this when it was inflated?

[CarmieJo]

Kind of, except it has never been that inflated and the ployps aren't brownish.

[PSH]

My guess is Dendronephthya aka Carnation/Tree Coral. I have heard they are very hard to keep. My LFS has one that looks really great. Same color as the one you just got. Good luck with it.
http://www.peteducation.com/article....articleid=2289

[Stevej72]

Some good info here if it is Dendronephthya

http://www.garf.org/1armci/dendro.html#Dendronephthya
Dendronephthya
These corals are some of the most beautiful soft corals in the world. Dendronephthya are soft branches corals that are brightly colored and they have prominent spicules that are often of a contrasting color.there are many beautiful colors available in shades of pink, red, purple, yellow, orange, or combinations of these colors.

One of the most important things that these predatory corals need is a very strong water current. Today we received several new Dendronephthya and we have placed them in a plastic tank that is 24 in. square and 12 in. tall. This tank will be connected in a system the tank that we're talking about in this story.

We will use three maxi jet 1200 power heads in this new tank. Water is pumped from a 48 by 24 in. tank that is 8 in. tall. One of these power heads will be on constantly. One of these power heads will be on for thirty minutes and off for thirty minutes, and the third power head will be on when the lights are on. The power head that returns the water from the 48 in. will be on twenty-four hours a day. The power that is on for thirty minutes will be directed in a clockwise flow. The other power heads will all be directed in a counterclockwise flow.



Much of the research done on Dendronephthya suggests that they feed on phytoplankton and we have been experimenting with a mixture of algae based flake food that is blended in SeaChem Reef Plugtm. We have also been using a new product from Kent Marine. This product is a preserved phytoplankton.

During the next two semesters we will be researching different ways of feed the non photosynthetic corals. In order to mass produce Dendronephthya in captivity it will be important to find acceptable substitute diets that can be manufactured in bulk.
There several new products available that contain concentrated phytoplankton that can be kept in the freezer. During the next year we will be reporting on our research and we will share with you any information that we are able to discover about what other people are doing to produce non photosynthetic predatory corals in captivity.

Many of these corals grow under ledges where they naturally hang down into strong water currents. Aragocrete Arches and long thin Tonga branches made from the Aragocrete allow us to build structures with many places to glue these corals.

This beautiful purple and white Dendronephthya was sent to us by one of our readers. The fact that she sent this to GARF to take care of because she thought that we could provide it proper environment for it is quite a compliment. We will be posting pictures of this long white soft coral along with pictures of than other Dendronephthya that she sent us.

This close-up photograph shows the conspicuous white spicules that are embedded in the body and polyps of these corals. We are very interested in any information that you may have about non photosynthetic predatory corals that you have kept in the past. Please e-mail us if you have any information about successes or failures with corals that are available in the aquarium hobby.



This morning was very exciting because I was able to unpack the box of corals that came from the farm in the Solomon Islands. Included in this mixture of soft corals work too brilliant yellow Scleronephthya. One of these corals is a bright lemon yellow with red polyps. The other coral is also Scleronephthya that has beautiful peach colored polyps on a bright yellow stalk.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read about these corals. We will be posting many new pages in the next few months about the new research that we are doing here at GARF.

Dendronephthya

[Stevej72]

Found another link

By Eric Borneman
http://www.reefs.org/library/aquariu...96/1296_4.html

[Boz]

Borneman's book - Aquarium Corals - Selection, Husbandry and Natural History has a nice write up on this species. It is an octocoral that requires high flow rates, and in many instances will have its polyps retracted in the abscence of flow. According to Borneman, they are entirely aposymbiotic and feed constantly on phtyo and zooplankton.

"Most collapse upon introduction into an aquarium, never to reinflate. An almost constant drip of phytoplankton and/or zooplankton is necessary to keep them well fed, and a strong consistent current is mandatory." Borneman - Aquarium Corals p. 136

Hope this helps.....

[CarmieJo]

That is interesting as tonight when I was feeding I turned off the circulation. Although I target fed this frag its polyps were retracted. Then as soon as I turned the flow back on I saw this

[Boz]

Sounds just like Borneman's description. Do you have some DT's or a phytoplankton culture that you could drip in its direction while the flow is on?

[veriann]

this one looks like some higher maintenance carmie,a suggestion for troublesome frags, id bubble cage feed it! grab a 3lt thurst tanker bottle of coke or something simular, cut the bottom rim off, silicon some air line tube down the both sides on the inside of the bottle! cover your