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View Full Version : Is my LFS wrong about this?


velvetelvis
12/28/2011, 08:34 AM
While at my LFS last night, I noticed some beautiful dendrophyllia colonies in one of the displays. The employee helping me told me that they were "Australian firecrackers" and that, unlike other dendros, these were photosynthetic. I told him I'd never heard of a photosynthetic dendrophyllia, but he assured me it was true--these were a special species. :rolleyes:

Now, I know that "firecracker" is just a trade name like "tree coral" or "leather" or "gorilla nipples", so it's just a regular NPS dendrophyllia--am I right? Has anyone else ever run across this bit of (I strongly suspect) misinformation? I'm no expert, but with the increasing interest in NPS corals, I imagine that a newly discovered photosynthetic sun coral would be news on the reefing blogs, at least.

CuttleKid
12/28/2011, 12:02 PM
Velvetelvis, you are absolutely right. There are no dendrophyllia that are photosynthetic. Also the term firecracker is just another common name for them that continue to make it difficult for proper identification. Like the way they say sun coral for tubastrea. Yes it is a sun coral but it makes a broad generalization of different species.

michael_cb_125
12/29/2011, 10:51 AM
Mind me asking which store you were at?

~Michael

aninjaatemyshoe
12/29/2011, 11:09 AM
The coloration of the coral is typically a dead giveaway. If the polyps are translucent and a bright red-to-yellow color, like most of what we call Dendrophyllia, then it is highly unlikely to be photosynthetic. All of the species in the Dendrophylliidae family that are photosynthetic - ie. Turbinaria, Duncanopsammia, Heteropsammia, etc. - tend to be brownish yellow or green in color, easy to recognize as photosynthetic.

Did the LFS guy say where he found this information?

velvetelvis
12/29/2011, 02:47 PM
Mind me asking which store you were at?

~Michael

Reef Keepers, in Clayton.

They usually have great livestock and good service, but I take some things they say with a grain of salt (no pun intended). Like the corals I picked up from them on the same night, which they ID'd as Neospongodes. As far as I know, Neospongodes is no longer a recognized genus (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong). They look like Stereonephthya to me, not that I'm a marine biologist...at any rate, they appear to be doing well under the same conditions as my Stereonephthya.

aninjaatemyshoe
12/29/2011, 03:32 PM
I wouldn't fault them too much on the Neospongodes issue. As far as I know, this is still a genus. Proper coral identification, particularly with certain corals, is something that even experts in the field struggle with.

Live aquaria used to list their Stereonephthya corals as Neospongodes.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1308051&highlight=neospongodes+live+aquaria

velvetelvis
12/29/2011, 04:42 PM
I wouldn't fault them too much on the Neospongodes issue. As far as I know, this is still a genus. Proper coral identification, particularly with certain corals, is something that even experts in the field struggle with.

Live aquaria used to list their Stereonephthya corals as Neospongodes.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1308051&highlight=neospongodes+live+aquaria

Ah, OK. Thanks for the clarification. Is Neospongodes all that common in the hobby, seeing as how it's an Atlantic coral? I think they get all their corals from Indo-Pacific souces. I'm wondering what I have now.

aninjaatemyshoe
12/29/2011, 05:29 PM
Common in the hobby, definitely not. I've never seen nor heard of someone definitively having it. IMO, most mentions of it are misidentified corals - probably Stereonephthya, possibly some other nephtheid - from the Indo-Pacific.

I wouldn't pound your head on the wall trying to figure out which species you have. If you read the paper I site in the link, you'll find that the systematics of corals in the Nephtheidae are all over the place. Genetic analysis and perhaps geographical origin appear to be the only reliable means of distinguishing some of these corals.

velvetelvis
12/29/2011, 06:18 PM
Common in the hobby, definitely not. I've never seen nor heard of someone definitively having it. IMO, most mentions of it are misidentified corals - probably Stereonephthya, possibly some other nephtheid - from the Indo-Pacific.

I wouldn't pound your head on the wall trying to figure out which species you have. If you read the paper I site in the link, you'll find that the systematics of corals in the Nephtheidae are all over the place. Genetic analysis and perhaps geographical origin appear to be the only reliable means of distinguishing some of these corals.

I was looking at that...yeah, outside of having a specialist examine a frag, it sounds nearly impossible to establish a definitive ID. It would be interesting to be able to narrow them down to a species, or at least a genus, but my real concern is knowing how to care for them properly. They are almost identical to the specimens in this article (http://glassbox-design.com/2010/stereonephthya-the-photosynthetic-carnation-coral/), so I think Stereonephthya is a good guess.

ptychoptera
12/31/2011, 08:24 PM
Common in the hobby, definitely not. I've never seen nor heard of someone definitively having it.

I did a little reading on this issue and the consensus among the people who study this is that Neospongodes consists only of three Atlantic species, and thus very unlikely to ever show up in an aquarium. Non-scleractinian corals are collected out of the Caribbean, but nobody seems to collect these for the aquarium industry, which is likely for the best anyways. Though I believe I heard of Julian Sprung keeping it back in the day.