The Hero Coral,Turbinaria heronensis,是所有宝塔杯珊瑚中最有趣的,因为它可以表现出一系列生长形式。有时英雄珊瑚完全像精致的外观一样分支Duncanopsammia, other times it’s nearly smooth and a flat cup shape more like a typical cup or scroll coral, but most often the colony shape is indeterminate between branching and plating in its appearance.
Despite being a photosynthetic coral and thriving in fairly bright to low light, in contrast to otherTurbinaria而且邓肯大多数英雄珊瑚通常主要像NPS珊瑚一样在夜间扩展息肉,这并不是一个疯狂的惊喜树突叶和图巴斯特里亚.The way that Hero corals occupy this indeterminate shape to their colonies and a photosynthetic and non-photosynthetic lifestyle makes them inherently fascinating and there’s simply no other coral like it.
We’ve long collected just about every piece ofTurbinaria heronensisthat we come across and several years ago we were fortunate enough to acquire a unique frag fromJason Foxthat was light brown with a not-so-small part of it infected with green fluorescent protein. We were very excited to keep and grow this piece but over the first year the green protein spread out so quickly that we fell out of love with it believing that it would eventually overtake the entire colony becoming entirely green like a more normal Hero coral.
However while the specimen has grown very well the spread of the GFP infected ‘grafted’ area has slowed dramatically resulting in a nearly bicolored colony of one of our favorite corals. In some areas the green pigment has developed into exotic swirly patterns that we can only pray will continue to persist as this coral continues to grow and perhaps one day it’ll be large enough to frag and distribute so that other reefers can enjoy this rare variant of a truly exotic stony coral.