My Hydnophora is a ^$#%#^&#&^

[Twitterbait]

what sources do you use for ID on the coralite level? I would like to get a good SPS/LPS reference for ID of coral from the skeleton.

[tdwyatt]

J.E.N. Veron has a good one, several others in use throughout the world now, as well as the NMITA ID key that I think is online at the Univ of Iowa. Several regioinal keys as well, I think NOAA, possibly the Smithsonian has one for Atlantic species, and there are several others in book form for geographic regions, most notably "Reef Corals of the Indo-Malayan Seas" and related keys that apply to the regions most of our specimens come from (simiar ones for the Red Sea, I have them at home on disk).

Google the DELTA system for DEscriptive Language Taxonomic Appplications, There may be a public domain application avaiable now that some of the bugs are out of it.

Maybe Spanks can shed some light on the NOAA apps available for taxonomy and identification...

Many other apps out there, most are limited to geographical areas of specialty rather than attempting to ID every type of coral throughout the world, although Charlie Veron's key is close to that.

HTH

[tdwyatt]

As soon as I pulled out the keys and started digging I found the actual ID (heh, forget all those old notes... )

Paraclavarina triangularis





This is a good blowup of the corallites in which you can see the characteristic short shallow valleys with the rows of fused septa. You cannot see it in this photo, but the branches are all triangular in their crossectional shape.



There is little encrustation at the base, it is usually followed by vertical branch growth if there is any horizontal extention of the base, and when branches meet, the anastomize. Most of the day the tentacles are pulled in, and the tissue looks very much like Hydnophora , and color looks to be pinkish during the day, tanish to brown at night. Mine will extend tentacles whenever it senses organics (food) in the water, but almost always extends tentacles at night. These seem to grow well as long as Ca and alk are high without any target feeding, although they do not like strong current (the tissue will die on the sides where anything but an occasionual puff of current blows by the specimen. Mine are sitting right under 10kK bulbs (about 2 inches from the surface to the bulb and to the specimen)


Do any of you out there have any specimens of this??? I am looking for any other color morphs.