Dendrophyllia ijimai might just need too much food

Fish Think Pink

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VINCENT CHALIAS
2 HOURS AGO

I have seen these amazing Non Photosynthetic Scleractinian (NPS) on a few occasions, mainly in exporting facilities around Indonesia. Dendrophyllia ijimai is a stunning bright orange, thick branching azooxanthellate coral.

But with quite a lot of diving under my belt, I met them in the ocean only on a few occasions. It’s not that they are rare, it’s just that they grow in places where flow and food are enormous. Not really the kind of place I enjoy diving.

NPS are just eating machines!​

These polyps need a lot of food to sustain their growth! They are very effective when food is abundant and the flow is enormous.


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I have this in pink and yellow.

Yes, its a labor of love that never gets better so definitely not for everyone ... and if you get good at it I've found get rewarded with even more abundant mouths to feed (and enough nitrates to kill everything else). I've just moved mine from it's "Sun Hut v3" into its cave where I started it out nearly 2 years ago.

He didn't know what he was buying, but it was all bright pink skeleton and I do love pink gifts! Food baths brought it back from death edge, and these days mine is a happy little mound. Warm memories of when he realized he bought a dead coral he wanted in trash can and I'm shouting "even dead it is the prettiest thing and let's glue it in the middle!" ... I do love hot pink. Fortunately it was glued to a little rock so I could take it out to spend the work day on my desk or evening watching TV in its food bath bowl.

Would I do it again... no but mostly because when it outgrows its cave either i'll need a larger "Hut" or re-aquascape to make it a larger cave ... and then a future fish might again throw it out of cave... so freestanding "Hut" of some sort might always be in my tank...
 
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