Cauliflower Coral

Care at a glance

Overview

A peaceful branching SPS that expands by growth rather than by stinging, though a colony still wants real room to branch outward without crowding its neighbors. It needs medium to high light and strong, turbulent flow to match the surge zones it grows in on the reef; low flow leads to thin, straggly growth and duller color. It also filters plankton from the water column, so feeding it micro-plankton or phytoplankton a couple of times a week helps growth, though it gets most of its energy from its zooxanthellae. Pocillopora can be slow to settle in after a move and does best acclimated to bright light gradually, but once established it is one of the more forgiving branching SPS corals, tougher than Acropora or Montipora while keeping the same branching look.

In the wild

Pocillopora damicornis grows in shallow, wave-swept reef flats and lagoons across the Indo-Pacific and Red Sea, where constant surge keeps the water moving and often shapes colonies into dense thickets of short, blunt branches. It is one of the most widely distributed stony corals on the planet, turning up as far as Hawaii and the rocky eastern Pacific coast of the Americas. In the aquarium it wants medium to high light and strong, turbulent flow, set in the middle to upper water column rather than a calm, low-flow corner.

Good to know

Pocillopora damicornis gets its cauliflower look from a dense mass of short, knobby branches covered in extended polyps, giving the colony a fuzzy texture rather than the sharp points of a true staghorn Acropora. Branch thickness and spacing shift with water movement, growing tighter and stubbier in strong surge and thinner and more open in calmer water. Like other stony corals it builds a calcium carbonate skeleton and hosts photosynthetic zooxanthellae, but it is also known for polyp bail-out, where individual polyps detach from a stressed colony and settle elsewhere to start new ones.

Did you know

Under stress, Pocillopora damicornis can shed individual polyps that drift off, settle elsewhere, and grow into entirely new colonies, a survival trick called polyp bail-out that most stony corals cannot pull off.

Related species

• 

  Birdsnest Coral

  Seriatopora hystrix

  5.9 in (15 cm)20 gal (75 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Cat's Paw Coral

  Stylophora pistillata

  5.9 in (15 cm)20 gal (75 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Blue Coral

  Heliopora coerulea

  9.8 in (25 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Carnation Coral

  Dendronephthya

  9.8 in (25 cm)20 gal (75 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Flowerpot Coral

  Goniopora

  9.8 in (25 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Kenya Tree Coral

  Capnella

  9.8 in (25 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)