Sea Fan Gorgonian

Care at a glance

Overview

One of the few gorgonians that a general reef keeper can succeed with, since it does not need the constant target feeding that most sea fans and sea whips require to survive. It still benefits from occasional feedings of phytoplankton or fine zooplankton on top of what it makes from light. Growth is slow and upright, so give it space to fill out and keep faster growing leathers and LPS from crowding or stinging it as it spreads. It is passive and will not sting or bother tankmates.

In the wild

Rumphella grows on Indo-Pacific reef slopes and in shallow, current-swept lagoons from Indonesia and the Philippines to Pacific island groups such as the Marshall Islands. Colonies form dense, upright bushes of thin branches covered in small feeding polyps, anchored to hard bottom where surge and current keep the branches swaying. In the aquarium it wants moderate to strong, ideally irregular or pulsing flow and moderate to fairly strong light, roughly 120 to 200 PAR, though a new frag can start lower on the rockwork and be moved up as it settles in. Give it an open spot with room for the branches to sway without brushing neighboring corals.

Good to know

Rumphella is a true gorgonian in the family Gorgoniidae, built around a flexible internal skeleton of the protein gorgonin rather than the rigid calcium carbonate skeleton of stony corals. Unlike most gorgonians in the hobby, which are non-photosynthetic and depend entirely on captured food, Rumphella carries symbiotic zooxanthellae and gets most of its energy from light. Its polyps still extend to strain fine plankton from passing current, which is part of why steady flow across the branches matters.

Did you know

Most gorgonians sold in the hobby, including popular orange and red types like Diodogorgia and Menella, have no zooxanthellae at all and slowly starve in home aquariums without expert level feeding, which is part of why Rumphella's ability to run mostly on light makes it one of the only sea fans regularly recommended outside the NPS specialist crowd.

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