#catalaphyllia

       Great for Beginners and experts alike 

As their name implies Elegance corals are a beautiful addition to your aquarium.  Elegance corals come in a variety of color pattern and have long anemone like tentacles around their perimeter with colored tips.  Their fleshy interior is usually a brown to emerald green color. 

Feeding:  Although Elegance corals receive some food from the sun, they do require regular feeding.  They can be fed phytoplankton liquids as well as frozen foods.  You can make your own frozen food by putting raw shrimp and other marine seafood in a food processor.  Even though the coral may take large chunks of food, feed it small ¼” or smaller pieces at a time. 

Lighting:  Elegance coral come from shallow muddy, grassy areas, and like brightly lit aquariums.  That said, grass and mud does shield them from the sun in the wild and therefore it is possible to provide too much light.   If you are using metal halides, introduce them to the light slowly.  Either hang the light high and slowly lower it or place some sort of filter between the light and the aquarium.  Sheets of white paper work well for this because you can remove one sheet at a time.  Just make sure it’s not close enough to the light to catch fire.    You may elevate the light an extra foot, then put the paper on your glass or acrylic top.  A similar procedure may be needed for newer metal halide substitute LED lights.

Water Flow:  Moderate water flow should be sufficient to keep these corals.  Be careful not to blow them over but provide enough to bring them food. 

Placement:  Elegance corals live in sand; therefore you should keep them on a sandy bottom.  If you want to elevate them to receive more light, try building a platform that can hold an inch or two of sand.  If you have a good coverage of T5s and an aquarium less than 2 feet deep, you probably won’t need to elevate them but you may want to in order to get better color.  If sand gets on them, they can remove it and may get some food from it first, that said, you never want to bury the coral 

Propagation: Elegance is not a good candidate for propagation in captivity.  It’s best to just enjoy the one you have.  If you do see budding, it usually means the coral is stressed. 

Aggression: Elegance corals are aggressive towards other corals nearby.  Some can grow to several feet in size but growth is usually slow.  Give them some room.  Sense they like to be on the bottom, giving them enough room is often not a problem. 

Other Information: As stated above, Elegance corals grow slowly.  If you witness rapid growth over days or even weeks, it likely means the coral is adapting to lower lighting than it would like.  Spreading itself over a larger area for a given volume allows it to collect more light.  This is a common trait in many coral species.  As lights age, you may not notice they are dimming but your corals do. 

Above: A slightly different color pattern from the elegance coral in the cover photo.