Open brain coral

Care at a glance

The open brain coral is a free-living, fleshy coral that inflates by day into an undulating, brightly coloured cushion sometimes twenty centimetres across. It attaches to nothing: in nature it lies loose on soft bottoms, and that is how it belongs in the tank.

So always set it on sand, never on rock — on hard material the tissue underneath gets damaged and rarely recovers. It wants little light and little flow, so the bottom is the right place on those counts too. In the evening thin feeding tentacles emerge; that is when to give it a small piece of meaty food. If it stays retracted by day, it is almost always sitting in too much light or too much flow.

Related species

• Plate coralFungia sp.
• Lobo brain coralLobophyllia sp.
• Pineapple blastomussaBlastomussa merleti
• Bubble coralPlerogyra sinuosa
• Blastomussa (wellsi)Blastomussa wellsi
• Branching bubble coralPhysogyra lichtensteini