Lobed Brain Coral

Care at a glance

Overview

Lobophyllia does not throw the long stinging sweepers that Euphyllia or Favia do, but it is sneakily aggressive after lights out, extending mesenterial filaments to digest the tissue of any coral it can reach, so give it a genuine gap of 6 inches or more from neighbors. It is sensitive to rising nitrate, with levels above about 30 to 40 ppm known to cause tissue recession, so stable, cleaner water matters more than intense light here. Spot feeding mysis or brine shrimp with the flow paused for a few minutes helps it fill out and color up, offered about once a week. It can be fragged by cutting between the fleshy lobes, though it grows slowly enough that commercial-scale propagation is uncommon.

In the wild

Lobophyllia lives on reef slopes and in lagoons across the Indo-Pacific, especially around Indonesia and the Great Barrier Reef, usually lower on the reef where light is gentler. In the aquarium it wants low to moderate light, roughly 80 to 120 PAR, and low to moderate indirect flow, just enough to clear waste from its mouths without holding the fleshy lobes retracted. Place it on the lower rockwork or sandbed with real space around it, since it grows a wide fleshy skirt well beyond its skeleton. Keep temperature 24 to 27 C and pH 8.1 to 8.4.

Good to know

Lobophyllia is a large polyp stony coral in the family Lobophylliidae, named for the lobed, fleshy valleys that give the coral its brain-like folds. A 2012 molecular revision folded the once-separate genus Symphyllia into Lobophyllia, since the two turned out to be the same lineage split mainly by whether neighboring corallites fuse along a shared ridge. It carries zooxanthellae for most of its energy but also digests food and rival tissue by extending mesenterial filaments from its stomach cavity, mostly after dark.

Did you know

A Lobophyllia colony that looks like a single smooth brain by day can be quietly digesting a neighboring coral's tissue by night, using the same stomach-lining filaments it uses to eat food, which is why keepers only discover the damage days later.

Related species

• Grooved Brain Coral

  Lobophyllia recta

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

• 

  Donut Coral

  Acanthophyllia deshayesiana

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

• 

  Acan Coral

  Acanthastrea echinata

  7.9 in (20 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Chalice Coral

  Echinophyllia

  13.8 in (35 cm)20 gal (75 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Acan Lord Coral

  Micromussa lordhowensis

  5.9 in (15 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)

• 

  Scoly Coral

  Homophyllia australis

  5.1 in (13 cm)11 gal (40 L)75–81°F (24–27°C)