- Two more corals, that's all I got left, two more to go.
(upbeat music)
Hey, a wonderful day to all of my fellow
and future hobbyists out there.
My name is Matthew, I am your BRS beginner guru.
I think the first eight corals on this list were amazing.
And if you're thinking right now, Matthew,
what eight corals are you talking about?
Check out the two previous videos
where we did beginner corals number one through five
and beginner corals six, seven, and eight.
But today we're going to finish off
my top 10 choices for beginning corals
with number nine and number ten.
Coral number nine is Catalaphyllia Jardinei.
I really should learn these Latin names,
but honestly I never hear it referred to
as Catalaphyllia, wait, I can't even, I can't remember it.
Catalaphyllia Jardinei,
I wanted to say jardinay,
which is like some weird French, Spanish pronunciation,
so I had to look it up.
But I don't know any hobbyists out there
who refer to it as Catalaphyllia Jardinei.
We just call it in the hobby, the Elegance Coral.
The Elegance Coral is a large polyp stony coral
with some beautiful long fleshy polyps.
Color variations, we're talking greenish, pink.
I wrote down this word here called pinkle.
I'm not sure what I was going for with that.
But you also have purple
and you have white-tipped Elegance Corals as well.
These are slow growers.
They can keep this very small skeleton structure
and just get a larger and larger polyp.
Super beautiful, but very slow growers.
The first care tip is flow
and we're talking really low to high,
somewhere medium is probably the best.
You might have to do a little bit of experimentation
with your Elegance Coral.
If the flow is too high,
it will likely pull in a lot more.
And the goal is to make it spread out as much as possible.
It's a relatively low light coral,
I'd say somewhere around 100 par,
but you can really go anywhere from probably 50 to 150 par.
I definitely recommend feeding this coral
since it's such a slow grower
and the corals need a little bit
of encouragement to come out.
Feeding one to two times a week
can definitely encourage some really vibrant colors
and maybe even help it grow faster.
They are not super aggressive,
but Elegance Corals have been known
to eat a passing snail, so just be on the lookout
and if they get a good snail treat,
the only thing you might have to do
is just pick up a few more snails.
Definitely want to put these lower down on the aquascape
and these can get huge.
One single large elegance polyps
might have a small stony structure.
But its diameter can literally get up to a foot.
I mean, that's the goal right? Up to a foot.
So make sure you give it plenty of space to grow,
or if you place it somewhere near other corals,
just know that, over time, you might have to
move those other corals.
Elegance Corals, I hesitated to add these to the lists
because they can definitely be
much more sensitive to water chemistry.
They do need somewhat decent alkalinity,
calcium and magnesium levels,
just like other LPS corals do.
And also low amounts of nitrates
and phosphates for their growth as well.
But depending on what part of the world they come from,
some seem to do really well
and others just seem to fade away and die.
Typically the Australian variants
are much more hardy than others.
If you're looking to build a budget coral tank,
Elegance Corals, unfortunately,
are not going to be the ones for you
because they are quite spendy.
We're talking the low hundreds to several hundred dollars.
I think Elegance Corals are probably
some of the most beautiful corals out there.
And they are definitely in my top five corals.
Their large fleshy polyps, that kind of green-ish hue,
it really looks good under blue lights.
But would I recommend it as the first coral you get?
Probably not.
Try out some of the other corals on this list, first.
Get those water parameters stable
before spending the several hundred dollars
on an Elegance Coral.
Our 10th coral on the list are all of the different types
of branching Euphyllia coral.
We're talking three specific species
from the genus Euphyllia.
And I'm going to have to read these out.
We're going to do a little experiment here.
I'm gonna read them out before I look it up.
And then after I look it up.
Here is how I would pronounce these three species
before looking up how to pronounce them.
Pair ran cora, Paraancora Euphyllia.
Paradivisa Euphyllia.
Glab rescens, glab resens?
Glabrescens, Euphyllia.
I'm going to look them up, hold on one second.
Well that pretty much didn't help at all.
But let's try it one more time here.
Euphyllia Paraancora, Euphyllia Paradivisa
and Euphyllia Glabrescens.
More commonly known, of course,
as the Branching Torch Coral, the Branching Hammer Coral
and the Branching Frogspawn Coral.
Euphyllia corals are large polyp stony corals.
There aren't a ton of colorations,
but enough to satisfy pretty much any hobbyists out there.
We're talking pink, green and inverse.
Some sort of pink-tipped, a purple-tipped, speckled neon.
So really we're talking the pinks and the greens,
but they are gorgeous.
They grow quite slowly.
So don't expect to be able to buy one head
And then a year later, frag off several new heads.
You may have several new heads of growth,
but they will grow extremely slowly.
Euphyllia prefer flow somewhere from low to medium.
If it's too high, you'll notice that
the Euphyllia will pull in their tentacles.
But if you find the sweet spot,
somewhere between low and medium,
not a direct hit from the wave maker,
the Euphyllia will amaze you with just how far
their tentacles can puff out.
Definitely on the lower lighting side,
probably somewhere around 75,
but they can definitely acclimate
probably anywhere from 50 to 150.
If you are going to put them in that higher par range,
you're probably going to want to lower the lights
and acclimate them over several weeks.
I've tried, supplementally feeding a lot of my Euphyllia
but they don't ever really seem to grab onto the food.
I could be wrong here,
but I'm going to say they're primarily
going to get most of the nutrition from the light.
If you did want a supplementally feed,
I'd probably recommend turning off all of the pumps
and the wave makers and feeding
directly towards their mouth.
Maybe they'll eat some of it, I'm just not sure.
They are definitely on the aggressive side.
They have these long sweeper tentacles that will come out
and will sting near my corals.
Although you can place Euphyllia with other Euphyllia,
I've actually found some success with a Euphyllia garden,
which includes Torch Corals, Hammer Corals,
and Frogspawn Corals.
But sometimes, the Torch Corals
don't play as nicely as they should.
Definitely put Euphyllia Corals lower down in the tank
and maybe on the sides more,
where the par level is going to be less.
And keep them at least six inches away
from other sensitive corals,
especially your SPS or small polyps stony corals.
These are probably the most finicky corals on our list,
but what they really need
for water chemistry is consistency.
Like other stony corals,
they're definitely going to need decent alkalinity,
calcium and magnesium levels.
but unlike other corals,
they don't do well with quick swings.
So keeping everything as stable as possible
is really important.
A quick nota bene here,
there's this thing called brown jelly,
which seems to really affect Euphyllia corals.
And it looks just like brown jelly.
And what happens is that some sort of bacterial infection
will infect ahead of this coral
and all of a sudden, within a day,
it will basically carve out all the tentacles,
turning them to this brown jelly.
If that happens to you,
you can often pull out the whole thing,
frag off that one head
and then do some sort of antibacterial and iodine dip.
But sometimes it just doesn't help.
And they brown jelly and it can be super frustrating.
A decade ago, these were super cheap
when I first started in the hobby
and I was like, why do people not want these?
They were so inexpensive.
That is no longer the case,
especially some really hot Torch Corals out there.
People will pay a thousand dollars for a single head.
You can still find a single heads of Euphyllia Corals
for under a hundred dollars, but these can definitely range
to several hundred dollars as well.
Overarching thoughts here,
Euphyllia Corals are my number one favorite coral,
Except when they brown jelly,
because it's super frustrating when they brown jelly
and it seems to happen out of nowhere.
Euphyllias have some of the best water movement out there.
Maybe not necessarily the most beautiful colorations,
but they make up for it with the texture
and the shape of their long polyps.
So definitely some of my favorites out there.
Not the easiest to keep, they need a stable home.
So until you have some stability,
try some of the other corals on this list
except for the Elegance Coral,
but some of the other corals on this list.
And then you can move into Euphyllia Coral.
Just a quick note, be sure to only buy
branching Euphyllia coral.
Never by a Wall Euphyllia Coral,
because if something goes wrong with that wall,
it will kill the entire wall.
Where if something goes wrong
with one of the branching Euphyllias,
you can often remove that branch and save the rest.
All right, Matthew.
All right, Matthew, I'll bite, I'll bite.
I'll go out and buy some of these beginner corals
you might be thinking to yourself.
But I bring them home and then what the heck do I do?
That's the next episode.
Thanks for watching, happy reefing, be well.
We'll see you next time.