Colt Coral

Care at a glance

Overview

A sessile leather coral that reproduces by fragmentation and by budding new lobes off its base, which makes it easy to propagate by cutting off a branch and mounting it to rock. It carries milder chemical defenses than heavier hitters like Sarcophyton or Sinularia, though its fast growth can still crowd out slower neighbors if it is not given space to expand. It rarely needs feeding and adapts well to a range of lighting, which is why it is often suggested as one of the easiest soft corals for a first reef tank.

In the wild

Colt coral grows across Indo-Pacific reef flats from the Red Sea to the Great Barrier Reef, forming a lobed, finger-covered colony on a short trunk. It adapts to a wide light range but grows best under moderate to high light, roughly 100 to 200 PAR, with moderate to strong flow that helps it shed its waxy coating and keeps the lobes free of debris. Give it room low to mid on the rockwork, since a mature colony can swell to nearly twice its resting size once fully expanded.

Good to know

Cladiella is a leather coral in the family Alcyoniidae, the same family as the toadstool and finger leather corals already in this catalog, and its tissue is stiffened by small calcite spicules rather than a hard skeleton. It is mostly photosynthetic and only lightly captures fine particulate food, so it has no strong need for target feeding. Like other leathers it periodically sheds a waxy film to clean its surface, closing up and looking dull for a day or two before reopening.

Did you know

A colt coral can look like a different animal from one day to the next: a colony that looks like a shriveled brown blob in the morning can fully inflate into a bushy, cream-colored bush covered in feathery polyps by evening.

Related species

• 

  Cabbage Leather Coral

  Sinularia dura

  11.8 in (30 cm)40 gal (150 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Devil's Hand Leather Coral

  Lobophytum

  11.8 in (30 cm)40 gal (150 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Flexible Finger Leather Coral

  Sinularia flexibilis

  11.8 in (30 cm)40 gal (150 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Toadstool Leather

  Sarcophyton

  11.8 in (30 cm)20 gal (75 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Finger Leather

  Sinularia

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

  Klyxum simplex

  9.8 in (25 cm)26 gal (100 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)