Coral

Chameleon Pachies are Packed with Color

Acanthastrea pachysepta is one of the most recognizable and hardy LPS corals even if they are still commonly confused with Lobophyllia. Ever since this coral was imported, we knew it couldn’t be mixed with any Lobophyllia without a risk of being…

Acid Trip Cyphastrea Just Melted My Brain

Ultra Coral Australia, the famous Australian coral business owned by master coral collector and farmer Nic Dos Santos, just showed us some pictures of a Cyphastrea coral that blew our mind! Multicolored Cyphastrea are quite a common sight. But this…

Kessil AP9X Vs. Neptune Sky – Comparing Spot and a Flat Lighting on the Euphyllia Reef

The Neptune Systems Sky LED and the Kessil AP9X are two reef aquarium light fixtures with similar power and an identical price but you can’t find two fixtures that are more different from each other in how they produce and…

Crazy Cave Dwelling Leptoseris Survives in Almost Total Darkness

在最近的一次潜水on a deep reef in Indonesia, we noticed a very unique coral under a ledge. It was a very colorful specimen of Leptoseris foliosa with very unusual coloration unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. We had…

WWC True Blue Xenia is Strikingly Blue

Xenia has long held a special esteem in the reef aquarium world, once cherished for its polyp pulsing behavior, and subsequently reviled for its capacity to rapaciously grow and take over tanks with the right conditions. There’s a long history…

Montipora capitata, the Plating & Branching Bumpy Monti

Montipora capitata is a distinctive species of coral which can have a very dynamic appearance depending on where it comes from. This wide ranging Montipora species is one of the dominant stony corals of Hawaiian coral reefs where it is…

‘Xenia’ is Unsurprisingly Taking Over Venezuelan Reefs

‘Xenia elongata’, recently reclassified as Unomia stolonifera, is a soft coral that is well known in the aquarium hobby for its supernatural growth rates in reef tanks. This fleshy octocoral is so prolific that it has been used in dedicated…

Is This The First Solid RED Elegance Coral?

We still remember where we were when we first received images of a ‘red’ elegance coral and we instantly dismissed the authenticity of the photographs. It wouldn’t take more than a few months until we saw a red elegance coral…

Is This Coral Pocillopora acuta or a Hybrid with Seriatopora?

Hybrid reef animals are a very common sighting and it is especially well documented in the marine angelfish, clownfish, butterflyfish, surgeonfish, and basically many different families of fish but it is much less well documented or studied among the corals.…

Glitter Face and Galaxy Gonies from Gallery Aquatica

After decades of being very challenging to keep, all of a sudden over the last few years many more reef aquarists have been able to enjoy living and growing colonies of Goniopora, the related Bernardpora, and unrelated but similar Alveopora. This…