Purple Sea Fan!?

[Jermz79]

I was at my LFS yesterday getting water for my water change and my buddy gave me a frag of some Purple Sea fan. It was free and looked nice and he said it would do good under the PC lighting in my Nano.

Can anyone give me any pointers for this type of coral. I read on liveaquaria.com about the red sea fan, but it doesn't really look like mine!



Thanks!

 

[steve-s]

There are many types of gorgonia and few if any are fully autotrophic. Commonly a partially photosynthetic species will have dull brown/grey polyps. Colorful or white polyps often indicate the coral is heterotrophic and will require heavy feeding. It is also quite difficult to dertermine species especially on color alone, most times you can get a good genus match but that's about it.

Discussion of the care of gorgonians

Cheers
Steve

 

[Jermz79]

WOW ... I read that whole article and seems like I may have gotten something that might be hard to care for! It has only been in my tank for about 24 hours right now and I haven't seen it extend any polyps as of yet.

Maybe I shouldn't have taken it from him without first knowing what exactly it would need to thrive, but when your handed something for free sometimes you just can't pass it up! I am going to contact him and see if I can bring it back to him and get a small cluster of red zoo's that he had. I don't know if he will trade me out since he gave it to me for free but it's worth the shot huh? I'd hate to see it slowly die in my tank


Thanks steve-s
Jermz