Broccoli tree coral

Care at a glance

Overview

The broccoli tree coral is a branching soft coral and a good first coral for a reef tank. Once it settles into a tank, it is one of the more trouble-free soft corals to keep.

Caring for the broccoli tree coral

Give the broccoli tree coral moderate to strong light, roughly 100 to 200 PAR. Medium to strong flow keeps its branches open and free of debris. Mount it on a stable horizontal rock rather than a steep slope.

Keep the water at 75 to 81°F (24 to 27°C) with a pH of 8.1 to 8.4. Give a new colony a few weeks to settle in. It reacts more to shipping and relocation stress than to everyday tank conditions. It gets most of its nutrition from light through its zooxanthellae, but it also takes in fine planktonic food.

It competes for space mainly through fast growth and mild chemical activity. Give it some separation from touchier corals, and run activated carbon in a crowded mixed reef. It grows by extending its main stalks. You can frag it by cutting off a branch and mounting it to rock, and fragging it is easy.

Good to know

The broccoli tree coral, Litophyton, is a soft coral in the family Nephtheidae. The genus Nephthea was folded into Litophyton after genetic studies in 2016. The two names refer to the same corals and are still used interchangeably in the trade. It is a separate genus from Capnella, the Kenya tree coral, though hobby sources sometimes lump every branching tree-form softie under one name. It produces a waxy film that it periodically sheds to clean itself.

In the wild

The broccoli tree coral grows on reef slopes and hard bottoms from the Red Sea across the Indo-Pacific. In the wild, its branching, broccoli-like head can reach close to a meter tall.

Common questions

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