Once in a while, you come across a coral during a dive, and you can’t not share it with everyone. This was the case during an exploration dive in the south of Sumba. Exposed, high swell, cold up-wellings, everyone was…
Echinophyllia
The Shape of Corals is Linked to How they Feed
It’s been over 20 years since I started culturing corals in the ocean and in dedicated aquariums. I always believed that the shape of a corals was mainly determined by trying to expose as much surface to light while withstanding…
Welcome to Gold Chalice central!
Chalice corals hit the scene in a huge way and now have been popular for quite a while, but since the Indonesian Coral ban, some corals we took for granted have nearly disappeared. Australian Chalice corals are pretty nice, but…
The Ludicrous Chalice Is Out Of This World
Last week an insane piece of Chalice came up from Indonesia. It’s like nothing we have ever encountered so far. This Unique piece collected by Bali aquarium somewhere in the Java Sea, was quickly snapped by Sea Dwelling Creatures. The…
Echinophyllia bulbosa & E. gallii, Two New Species of Chalice Corals from the Indian Ocean
The diversity of chalice corals in the aquarium hobby is already very high but now we’ve got two new species to add to that lineup. Echninophyllia gallii and E. bulbosa are two new recently described species of chalice corals from the Indian Ocean, the…
New Melting Pot Chalice coral displayed by World Wide Corals
The Melting Pot Chalice coral took the reef world by storm when it first surfaced, and it’s been a while since we’ve seen a reasonable contender for that Melting Pot title. Thankfully, World Wide Corals had an incredible and large…
A selection of Echinophyllia chalice corals from the Solomon Islands
As far as the hobby is concerned, nearly all of the stupid-awesome colored chalice corals are basically only found in Indonesia. Australia throws out some winners here and there but by and large, Indo is where it’s at when it…
Rainbow Corals: The Master Aquarium List
Twenty years ago, “mini reef hobbyists” were lucky to get corals in a particularly juicy shade of brown, and if they were lucky there might be a hint of green in an elegance coral or trachyphyllia. But this is 2015…
Convict chalice Echinophyllia documented in its natural habitat
Convict chalice corals are specimens of Echinophyllia plating colonies with a very distinctive series of stripes running usually from the edge of the oral disc (mouth) to the colonie’s edges. The lines of convict chalice corals can be very dark, or…
The coral tree of life is being rewritten one LPS at a time
Warning: the following is a nerdgasm of coral taxonomy, guest-written by Joe Rowlett, one of the many talented fish geeks working the fish tanks at Old Town Aquarium in Chicago. Historically, corals have often been grouped at the genus and family level based…