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Old 10-29-2008, 01:34 PM   #8
simico
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Join Date: Nov 2007

Posts: 12
Originally posted by G600:
Can you identify the white coral to the right of Actinodiscus cardinalis?
It's the only (big) coral you didn't mention.  
I missed that one out, as to my eye it is dead (!). It was very common to fill tanks with bleached corals in the 80's, but as people figured out how to keep corals alive in closed systems, the fashion understandably completely reversed. Maybe it is a homage to the early tanks, which would be a nice touch by Jim. Incidently, the bubble coral was one of the first sucessfully kept living corals, so it's inclusion is another nice choice.

If I had to (very much) guess from the shape of the skeleton, I could suggest that in life it was something like a Hydnophora Rigida. If alive, this would be a flouresent green due to the symbiotic zooxanthellae. There aren't many white corals, as the corals use various coloured pigments to protect their tissue from UV radiation, although there are some. I would say this was definitely an SPS coral and possibly in life a Hydnophora Rigida (common name Horn Coral).
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