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Related FAQs: Mussids, Mussids
2, Mussid Identification,
Mussid Behavior,
Mussid Compatibility,
Mussid Selection,
Mussid Disease,
Mussid Systems,
Mussid Feeding,
Mussid Reproduction,
Stony/True Coral,
Coral System Set-Up, Coral
System Lighting, Stony Coral
Identification, Stony Coral Selection, Coral
Placement, Foods/Feeding/Nutrition,
Disease/Health, Propagation,
Growing Reef Corals, Stony
Coral Behavior,
Related Articles: Large
Polyp Stony Corals, Stony
or True Corals, Order Scleractinia, Dyed
Corals,
/The Best Livestock For Your Reef Aquarium:
Brain, Meat, Pineapple
Corals, Family Mussidae, Pt. 1
To: Part 2, Part
3
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By Bob Fenner |
Acanthastrea ishgakiensis and Lobophyllium
hemprichii, Malaysia
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Family Mussidae Ortmann 1890.
Variously called Meat and Brain corals for obvious common characteristics:
large "meaty" polyps, wandering valley-like arrangement of corallites
like the sulci of grey matter. All have distinctive thick columellae and
corallite walls with toothed septa.
Range:
Thirteen genera. Eight in the Indo-Pacific, four in the Atlantic and Scolymia
which is found in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
| Selection: Take care to examine prospective purchases
carefully. Avoid those with obvious damage, such as skeletal breaks,
algae growing on exposed parts of the skeleton as showing in the
Lobophyllia at right. |
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Aquarium Care:
Other than Scolymia, Lobophyllia, not much used in the aquarium interest...
due to slow growth, stinging propensity (my mesenterial filaments). Not hard to
keep... most requiring not much light, water circulation. Need to be wide-spaced
from other sedentary invertebrates. Though all are hermatypic,
photosynthetic, most are voracious feeders of meaty foods.
Genus Acanthastrea Milne Edwards and Haime 1848. Typically are made up
of flat colonies that are either massive or encrusting. Corallites as individual
circles to elongate in structure. Septa with tall, thick teeth.
| Acanthastrea echinata (Dana 1846) Pineapple Coral. Circular colonies
tat are typically boulder-like. Septa with long, pointed teeth (most
easily seen in live specimens). Brown, green to brightly colored. The most
common member of the genus, though this one not all that often seen.
Maldives photo and close-up. |
 
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| Acanthastrea faviaformis (Veron 2000). Distinctive
septa-costae with thick teeth. All dirty brown in color. Upper Red Sea
photo. |
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| Acanthastrea hillae Wells 1955. Encrusting usually.
Colonies to more than five feet in diameter, with irregular shaped
corallites. Contrasting colored walls and oral discs. Bunaken,
Sulawesi, Indonesia pix. |
 
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| Acanthastrea ishigakiensis Veron 1990.
Hemispherical, small boulder-like colonies up to a foot and a half in
width. Most are blue-grey in color with oral discs of contrasting color.
Usually fleshy in appearance. Colonies in Bunaken/Sulawesi/Indonesia,
Pulau Redang, Malaysia and the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea below. |
Genus Blastomussa Wells 1961. Colonies are phaceloid (polyps on
separate column-like branches growing from a common center). or subplocoid (polyps having a gap between them
or at least not fused at their walls). Fleshy to the point of not being able to
make out corallite characteristics when live. Septa with lobed teeth that slope to oral
discs. Compare with the faviid genus Caulastrea whose polyps lack lobed teeth
and lack fleshy mantles. Prefer low light and current conditions.
| Blastomussa merleti Wells 1961. Small corallites
Under 7mm. in diameter). Septa in two cycles, the larger looking like
white teeth. Mantles generally greatly expanded by day (tentacles out only
at night). Aquarium images. Easily fragmented. A synonym of B.
loyae according to Veron, 2000. |
 
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| Blastomussa wellsi Wijsman-Best 1973. Pineapple
Coral. Phaceloid
colonies. Polyps 9-14 mm. in diameter. Numerous colors, often with
contrasting centers. Here under culture at Dick Perrin's Tropicorium and
in an aquarium. |
 
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To: Part 2, Part
3
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