What Coral is this??

[fishnerd02]

I've had this coral about 2 years, it was about the size of a fist, now it is the size of a very large dinner plate, in fact I broke off a piece and moved it to the other side of the tank. I might try to trade some at the LFS but I want to know what kind it is. Is this table coral?

 

[babyb]

some kind of hard coral idk what kind, havent really masters the hard corals yet, but i was wondering what kind of lights you had it under

 

[farslayer]

Looks like a monti to me, but I'm no SPS expert

 

[fishnerd02]

I know its a hard coral, or perhaps semi hard coral. The green stuff is very soft, like carpet, but if I do a water change, it all retracts into the exoskeleton which is quite hard. I'm just not sure of the name.
For lighting I have the Orbit Current USA. 260 watts on a 50 gallon. Works great, has built in fan and 3 different outputs so you can time them differently. I had a crappy Chinese light system before that had the ballast die every 6 months (Never get Heleos). This is way better.

 

[farslayer]

If that is a monti, I believe your lighting is no good for it. SPS, from my understanding, require metal halide lighting and a minimum of 20x water flow in the tank. Maybe an SPS person will chime in on this thread.

 

[bonebrake]

It is an Echinophyllia sp., they are rather slow growers and some color variants are very rare and carry a big price tag. Green is the most common and they do not require a lot of light. I have one that has grown quite a bit in the year I have had it and it is almost completely in the shade under power compact fluorescent lamps.

 

[farslayer]

Ah, thanks for the feedback, I was afraid he had a coral he couldn't care for and the thing looks awesome.

 

[fishnerd02]

It would have died 2 years ago if I had the wrong lighting. I've had it in the same conditions for the past 2 years. It has grown more than 6 times it original size! Thanks for the ID, it doesn't seem to need excessive light, For a couple months I was running only about half the lights due to previous ballast problem. It shrunk some, but came back big with the new lights.
Thanks...

 

[murph145]

almost looks like a plating hydonapora spelling??

 

[krazekajin]

I vote for a monti. And for a coral to grow from a frag to larger than a dinner plate is considered success. Thus, who cares what kind of light he has, because the thing is huge.

 

[kogle]

Wow! nice monti. cap.