Anthelia??

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lbannie

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Jan 30, 2010
Messages
501
Location
Upstate NY
My coral obsession has started!:dope: What's your opinion on Anthelia? It looks very pretty.....I'm still a beginner, would this be ok? Any other tips?
 
Anthelia is in the same boat as xenia. Very hardy and a good beginner coral, just make sure to isolate it, or be prepared for it to spread everywhere. You can isolate the rock you buy on the sand and it will grow to one large piece instead of an entire forest that covers everything, unless you want that... But its hard to control if you ever decide you don't in the future.
 
I have some little "blue snowflake polyps", which were sold as Sansibia. Not sure if it truly is Sansibia, or just a variant of Anthelia, but the two are closely related.

I really liked the look of these and wanted some, but like Jimbo said... I didn't necessarily want it all over my tank, so I isolated the rock in the corner of my tank, not touching anything else. No problem. Until, at least, it decided to spawn. One day it was covered in little white spheres, which I thought was just debris that had settled on to it. So I blew it off. As they're floating everywhere in the tank, I realize how perfectly spherical these things are. I look closer and realize that they most likely are larvae or eggs... not 100% sure how this thing reproduces. Needless to say, I now have it EVERYWHERE in my tank. It's better than algae, but just as invasive. Luckily, it seems to be on the loosing end of any battle when it gets near other coral.

Guess my point is, even if you isolate it, don't assume it won't spread itself to all ends of your tank. Soft corals seem good at doing that type of stuff!
 
I have some little "blue snowflake polyps", which were sold as Sansibia. Not sure if it truly is Sansibia, or just a variant of Anthelia, but the two are closely related.

I really liked the look of these and wanted some, but like Jimbo said... I didn't necessarily want it all over my tank, so I isolated the rock in the corner of my tank, not touching anything else. No problem. Until, at least, it decided to spawn. One day it was covered in little white spheres, which I thought was just debris that had settled on to it. So I blew it off. As they're floating everywhere in the tank, I realize how perfectly spherical these things are. I look closer and realize that they most likely are larvae or eggs... not 100% sure how this thing reproduces. Needless to say, I now have it EVERYWHERE in my tank. It's better than algae, but just as invasive. Luckily, it seems to be on the loosing end of any battle when it gets near other coral.

Guess my point is, even if you isolate it, don't assume it won't spread itself to all ends of your tank. Soft corals seem good at doing that type of stuff!

haha ain't that the truth. I have the same blue polyps, they ended up choking out several zoo colonies.
 
Yeah, Anthelia will definitely spread under good tank conditions. Here's a few pics of what this colony looked like when I got it 3/11/10

img_1157414_0_74c2dcdfd131779186de8497fdb72f85.jpg


4/19/10

img_1157414_1_42516ffcf7ba3263ee1f8fce55a35a66.jpg


8/24/10

img_1157414_2_0f261fd091cb1479536a5b8d2057e7c0.jpg


This is the main colony, I just re-arranged the tank and probably covers over 20 square inches of rock. I have fragged off about 2 square inches for others. There is also another colony not shown that is about 1 or 2 square inches.
 
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