Tangerine Sea Fan

Care at a glance

Overview

This is a coral for a dedicated non-photosynthetic setup, needing several feedings of fine plankton foods every day, and a dosing pump dripping food continuously is the most realistic way to deliver them. Give it shade, steady strong flow across the fan, and stable water with attention to iodine and trace elements. In a mature system with committed feeding it is a striking centerpiece, and it is completely peaceful toward everything around it.

In the wild

Annella grows on current-swept lower reef slopes across the Indo-West Pacific, anchored to rock and rubble at depths where plankton streams past all day. Its thin branches fuse into a broad, net-like mesh, and wild fans of Annella mollis rank among the largest sea fans in the ocean. The cultured tangerine form from Biota Palau keeps the same structure in bright orange at a much more manageable scale.

Good to know

The genus sits in the family Subergorgiidae, and Biota offers this coral as either Annella mollis or Annella reticulata, both accepted species, so the honest label for aquarium colonies is Annella sp. It is azooxanthellate, with no symbiotic algae, and every polyp on the mesh must strain its own food from the water. The fused lattice works exactly like a net stretched across the current.

Did you know

Wild Annella fans can top two meters across, which is why divers treat them as landmarks, and a home colony carries that same netted architecture in miniature.

Common questions

Related species

• Purple Sea Fan

  Gorgonia ventalina

  Saltwater

  70.9 in (180 cm)53 gal (200 L)73–81°F (23–27°C)