View Single Post
Old 10-28-2008, 05:21 PM   #2
simico
Registered
 
Join Date: Nov 2007

Posts: 12
Originally posted by clifdene:
It would be good to have names for the corals etc. as well as the fish.  
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/n...oral-names.jpg

I know most of them, it's easiest if I just write the latin and common names on a jpeg to save confusion. Corals are often very simlar, and microscopy would be used to identify individual members of species. Interestingly most of the corals are in the Large Polyped Stoney coral (LPS) group, with some anenomes too, but very few small polyp corals (SPS). Aggressive stinging and wandering anenones would cause some rapid losses in this tank, starting with neighbouring corals. Many of the invertebrates in this tank have very aggressive defensive stings! Also interesting is the starfish wanders around while motile corals such as the Fungia are fixed. I would say that the Zoathids are indeed Zoas not Palys, although their scale would suggest otherwise in the digital image. I think this is a scale issue and they are in fact zoas that just appear unnaturally large. I have left the Sarkofytun (leather coral) at the top of the bubble column unlabeled as it could, just maybe, be a more desirable Turbinaria (Vase coral). Also, the small LPS cluster could be a type of Caulastrea (Candy Coral) or maybe a Nemenzophyllia (Fox Coral). Left of that, (behind the clams) is possibly a Devils finger soft coral. The LPS hard coral (centre bottom) looks like some kind of Open brain, but not one I can ID with a latin name or be 100% sure of... The purple shading on the far left most rock in the tank is corraline algae, which you would expect to have spread widely throughout a mature tank...

...Hopefully that answers the question... Si
simico is offline   Reply With Quote