Torch Coral

What a torch coral is

A torch is Euphyllia glabrescens, a large-polyp stony coral. Each head is one polyp sitting in its own tube of skeleton, called a corallite. Long tubular tentacles come out of that tube, and each one ends in a rounded, slightly swollen tip. Those colored tips are packed with stinging cells.

The tip is the whole identification. If the tips are flattened into a T, an anchor or a hammer head, you are looking at a hammer. If each tip splits into several small rounded points like a cluster of eggs, it is a frogspawn. Somewhere between the two, the trade says “frammer,” which is not a species. Listings blend the three constantly, so look at the tips in the photo before you read the name.

One more lookalike is Euphyllia cristata. Its tentacles are shorter, packed tight and stand upright instead of flowing, so it looks stubby next to a torch and barely moves in the current. People mistake a healthy cristata for a sick torch. When we have one, it is listed in this category.

On names: a 2017 genetic study moved hammers and frogspawn into a different genus, Fimbriaphyllia, and NOAA adopted the new names in 2024. Torches stayed Euphyllia glabrescens. The trade still calls all three Euphyllia, and so do most listings, ours included. For a side-by-side ID with photos, see our torch coral identification guide.

The torch morphs we list, and what the names mean

Torch names are trade names. They describe a look, not a species, and nobody governs them. Tip color also shifts with where the coral came from, how it was grown, your lighting and your water chemistry. Two torches sold under the same name can look different in your tank than in the seller’s photo. Buy from the photo.

What the common names describe:

• 24K Gold: solid gold to amber tentacles, a paler or matching tip, and no green in the body. On a true 24K the tips stay in the gold-to-yellow range and brighter than the stalks. Green, blue or white tips mean a different morph.
• Joker: a contrasting tentacle and tip, usually a purple, pink or lavender body against a sharply different tip color. Ours is listed as Malaysian Joker.
• Gold Tip: a green or olive body running to a gold tip.
• Hellfire: orange-red through the tentacle with a contrasting tip.
• Classic gold and green: the gold torch has warm amber-gold tentacles and is a hobby staple. The green torch has a metallic green body with contrasting glowing tips. Our TUG Toxic Green belongs to this family.
• Aussie, Malaysian and Indo: where a line came from, not a color. Aussie torches are generally thicker-tentacled and slower. Malaysian and Indo lines tend to have longer, more flowing tentacles.

Other names you will see here, depending on what is in stock: Holy Grail, Malaysian Holy Grail, Reverse Grail, Dragon Soul, Dragon Tamer, Tiger and Ultra Tiger, Black & Gold, Highlighter Tip, Malaysian Sun God, Malaysian Miami, NY Knicks, Bright Green Long Tentacle, and the occasional multi-morph torch garden. The listing photo is the reference, not the name.

A named morph costs more because collectors want it. It is not harder to keep. A torch with an unusual fleshband color takes the same care as a common one, so if this is your first torch, make it an inexpensive green or gold. It teaches exactly the same lessons as a Holy Grail.

Torch care, in numbers

These come from our Torch Coral Care Guide. Holding a number steady matters more than hitting the middle of the range.

Parameter	Target
Light	75–150 PAR is where most keepers run them. Our care guide takes a settled colony as high as 200. Published ranges vary, so step up slowly and watch the tentacles
Flow	Medium and indirect: tentacles sway and extend fully without being pinned back
Placement	Middle of the rockwork, glued down, where you see it every day
Clear space	At least 6 inches on every side for a single head, 1 foot for a colony
Temperature	76–78°F
Salinity	1.025–1.026
Alkalinity	8–9 dKH, moving no more than about 0.5 dKH unintentionally in a month
Calcium	400–450 ppm
Magnesium	1,300–1,400 ppm
Nitrate	Detectable, not zero. Commonly somewhere in the 2–15 ppm range; torches often look better at 5–10 than in a stripped tank
Phosphate	0.03–0.10 ppm, not zero
Feeding	Helps, not required
Difficulty	Intermediate

Alkalinity is the number that kills torches. High alkalinity is not the problem, and neither is low. Moving alkalinity is. If yours has drifted, bring it back no faster than about 0.5 dKH a day, and test on a schedule with the numbers written down.

Salinity drifts quietly. Calibrate your refractometer with calibration fluid, not RO/DI water. A refractometer that is off by 0.002 will slowly cook a torch while every number in your logbook looks perfect.

Temperature should be boring. A steady 77°F is fine. A tank that swings from 75 to 81 between lights-off and mid-afternoon stresses it every day.

Zero nutrients is a finding, not a gold star. When phosphate bottoms out, the algae living in the coral’s tissue build faulty membranes and take light damage more easily, so a torch in a stripped tank goes pale, thins and recedes. Our nitrate and phosphate target ranges explain why stable beats zero.

With light, the speed of a change matters more than the number. Ramp any change over weeks, not days. The reef tank lighting guide covers how to measure and step it.

Where to put it, and where not to

Put a torch in the middle of the rockwork, in medium flow that reaches it from more than one direction instead of a single jet. Glue it down, because a torch that falls damages its own heads. Put it where you look every day. The fleshband tells you about trouble before anything else does, and you only see it if you look.

Keep it out of these spots:

• Under the most intense part of the light. It pales or browns to protect itself.
• In a powerhead’s direct stream. The tentacles get pinned back and it cannot feed.
• Within reach of other corals, other Euphyllia most of all.
• Next to leather corals. They fight with chemicals, and the torch usually loses.
• On open sand, where snails and hermits bulldoze it and detritus settles on it.
• Within reach of an anemone.
• Against the glass, where the algae scraper finds it.
• In a dead spot with no water movement.

Spacing is about what happens after dark. Each polyp can grow one long, heavily armed sweeper tentacle. A sweeper takes about 30 days to develop, comes out at night, and reaches farther than the coral looks capable of. Two torches from different sources will build sweepers against each other even though they are the same species. Before you glue anything new near a torch, look at the tank at night with a flashlight.

How to pick a healthy torch

Start with the fleshband, the ring of tissue wrapping the base of the polyp where it meets the skeleton. On a healthy torch it is plump, evenly colored and completely covers the top edge of the corallite. Here is how to read it:

• Full and inflated, no skeleton showing: healthy.
• Thinning or slightly see-through: something is wrong, and now is the time to find it.
• Pulled back with bare white skeleton showing: active recession, measured in days, not weeks.
• Bare skeleton with green or hairy algae on it: that tissue is gone for good.

Then the tentacles. A healthy torch stays fully inflated through the day, with tentacles hiding the skeleton. Shrunken heads that show skeleton mean stress. Fine, stringy tentacles usually mean the coral has been living under too much light or too much flow.

Then the tips. On a named morph, check that the tips match what the name promises. A “24K” with green tips is a different torch.

Look at the skeleton and the plug as well as the flesh. Flatworm eggs collect on the plug and at the base of the branches, and vermetid snail tubes sit on nearby rock. Never buy a torch showing brown jelly. It spreads fast.

For most tanks, a single head of a good morph beats a multi-head colony. It settles faster, costs far less, and splits on its own.

A torch that is already open and eating in an aquarium has one fewer adjustment to make. Ours sit in our systems under aquarium light, flow and feeding before they are offered, so the only change they face is your tank.

When a torch will not open

First question: is there bare skeleton?

If tissue still covers the skeleton and the polyps are just pulled in, that is retraction. It is common, usually temporary, and you have time to work out why. If you can see bare skeleton and the tissue line moves between photos, that is recession, and it is an emergency.

For retraction, check these in order. The first one gets skipped the most.

1. What changed? Corals react to change, not to absolute numbers. List everything from the last few weeks: light or photoperiod, carbon or GFO, a water change, a new salt bucket, a new fish, a dosing change, a heater that stuck.
2. The alkalinity trend. Look at the last few weeks of readings, not today’s number.
3. Salinity. Recalibrate the refractometer with calibration fluid before you trust it.
4. Temperature swing. Check the high and the low, not the setpoint.
5. Nutrients. A zero on nitrate or phosphate is the answer, not a clean bill.
6. Flow and light at the coral itself. Too much flow pins the tentacles back. Too much light browns it out. If the torch opens at night when the pumps drop, it is flow.
7. Attackers. Check at night with a flashlight. Look for a neighbor’s sweepers reaching it, fish or crabs picking at it, boring worms at the skeleton base, flatworms and vermetid snails.

Then leave it where it is. Moving a sulking torch again and again is one of the most common ways people kill one. Give it two weeks in one spot.

What to expect once you fix the cause:

What you fixed	When it usually improves
Flow, placement, a neighbor, a pest removed	Days
Light, nutrients or alkalinity	2 to 6 weeks
Nothing changes after 6 weeks	The cause has not been found yet

That timeline is what we see in our systems. It is not published data, because nobody has measured torch recovery times.

Flatworms that eat Euphyllia leave a signature: recession that climbs from the base of a head while the tentacles above still look healthy. Adults drop off in a standard coral dip within minutes. No dip is documented to kill the eggs, which is why our guide lays out a weekly dip for six to eight weeks, scraping the plug and branch bases each time.

Vermetid snails are the cause almost nobody checks. Look for small hard tubes on the rock nearby. They cast mucus nets, easiest to see at night, and a torch touched by those nets retracts on that side. Once the snail is gone, the torch usually comes back within days.

Brown jelly is the emergency: a brown, gelatinous film with tissue disappearing underneath, spreading visibly fast. Take the head out of the display, clean it off in a separate container, and throw that water away so you are not seeding the tank. A single-head torch with established brown jelly is usually lost. A branching colony caught early and cut well below the lesion is often saved. The full cutting and dipping protocol is in Why Is My Torch Coral Not Extending?

Torch, hammer or frogspawn

All three want nearly the same water. What changes is how much room they need and how much they forgive.

	Torch	Hammer	Frogspawn
Species	Euphyllia glabrescens	E. ancora and E. paraancora, now Fimbriaphyllia	E. divisa, now Fimbriaphyllia
Tentacle tip	One rounded knob on a long tentacle	Flattened into a T, anchor or hammer head	Splits into several small rounded points
Growth form	Branching: separate heads on their own stalks	Wall or branching	Wall or branching
Aggression	Highest of the three; longest sweepers	Calmer than a torch	Calmer than a torch
Clear space	6 inches for a head, 1 foot for a colony	6 inches on all sides	Clear space on all sides
First Euphyllia?	No. Keep a hammer or frogspawn healthy for months first	Usually the one we start people on	Also counts toward the torch gate
Browse	This page	Hammer corals	Frogspawn corals

If you have never kept a Euphyllia, start with a hammer. It forgives light and flow mistakes that a torch does not.

Can they share a tank? Yes, with space. Hammers and frogspawn are calmer and can sit a little closer together, though we still leave a few inches. A torch carries the longest sweepers of the three and wins every exchange, so it gets the full six inches. Keep every Euphyllia from touching any other. The full breakdown, including frammers and cristata, is in Torch vs Hammer vs Frogspawn.

Are you ready for a torch?

Our care guide sets six conditions. Be honest with yourself about each one.

1. The tank has run stable for six months minimum, and nine to twelve is better. That means running, stocked and stable, not “set up six months ago.”
2. You test alkalinity on a schedule and the numbers are written down.
3. Alkalinity has not moved more than about 0.5 dKH unintentionally in the last month.
4. Nitrate and phosphate are detectable, not zero.
5. You have kept a hammer or frogspawn healthy for months. This is the real gate.
6. There is room for it to grow without touching anything.

If you are short on one, call us at (305) 850-9949 or send us a message before you buy. Starting you on a hammer beats selling you a torch that dies.

Why torches cost what they do

A torch adds heads at a pace measured in months. A zoa colony can double in a season. Supply of any named torch grows slowly no matter how many people want one.

Cutting one is risky. Fragging a torch means bone cutters through skeleton, and a bad cut can start recession or brown jelly and cost the whole colony. Careful growers cut conservatively, which keeps supply tight.

Wild supply is uncertain. Stony corals are listed under CITES Appendix II, and major source countries have repeatedly restricted or halted export. When supply stops, prices do not come back down afterward.

Growing a torch to a sellable size also takes years of tank space, light and stable chemistry. On top of that, named morphs carry collector premiums, and those premiums reflect demand. The biology is the same.

Bringing a new torch home

1. Turn the lights off before you open the box.
2. Float the sealed bag for 15 to 20 minutes to match temperature. That is all the float is for.
3. Skip the drip. Shipping water is low in pH, which keeps its ammonia in the harmless ammonium form. Raise the pH slowly with a drip and you convert it to free ammonia while the coral sits in it. At pH 7.4, 2 ppm of total ammonia holds about 0.024 ppm free ammonia. At pH 8.2 the same water holds about 0.141 ppm, roughly six times more.
4. Dip it the Euphyllia way: half strength, half the time. That is about five minutes at roughly half the labeled concentration, with temperature and salinity matched exactly. Never blast a torch with a turkey baster; the tissue tears. Rinse it in clean tank water before it goes near the display. If it is going into a quarantine tank first, you can wait 24 hours before dipping.
5. Lift it by the plug or rock, never by the tissue, and set it low and shaded in gentle indirect flow.
6. Leave the lights off until the next morning, then run them low. For Euphyllia our shipping guide starts around 50–90 PAR for the first week, then steps up over two to four weeks.
7. Photograph it from the same angle each day, with something in the frame for scale.

Expect the first tentacles in one to two days and a normal look in three to five. Do not feed until the tentacles are out. If you run a quarantine tank, our guides range from two to six weeks. For a new Euphyllia, four to six gives any flatworm eggs time to hatch where you can see them. The full method is in our Acclimation & Dipping Guide and How to Dip Corals.

Feeding

A torch gets most of what it needs from light. It will take small meaty food a couple of times a week and put on head splits faster for it, but it does not need to be fed to survive. Feed when the tentacles are out, never into a closed head. Our spot feeding guide covers how.

Questions we get asked

Why is my torch closed?

If it just arrived, that is normal: expect the first tentacles in one to two days. If it has been in your tank for weeks, work through the checklist above, starting with what changed. Check it at night too. A torch that opens when the pumps drop is telling you the flow is too strong.

How long does a new torch take to open after shipping?

First signs in one to two days, a normal look in three to five. Give it two weeks in one spot before you judge it, and do not keep moving it.

How much light does a torch need?

Most keepers run torches around 75–150 PAR, and our care guide takes a settled colony as high as 200. Above roughly 200 the tentacles tend to shorten and the color washes out. A new arrival starts lower, around 50–90 PAR for the first week, and steps up from there.

Can I keep a torch with my hammer or frogspawn?

In the same tank, yes, with space: six inches around the torch, and never touching. The torch carries the longest sweepers and will win.

Can two torches sit next to each other?

Not touching. Two torches from different sources build sweepers against each other even though they are the same species.

Do I have to feed it?

No. It survives on light. Small meaty food a couple of times a week speeds up head splits.

How fast does a torch grow?

In a stable tank with light feeding, expect visible new head development in three to six months.

Should I buy a single head or a colony?

For most tanks, a single head. It settles faster, costs far less and splits on its own.

Why are torch corals so expensive?

They grow slowly, they are risky to cut, and wild supply keeps getting restricted at the source. Named morphs add a collector premium on top.

Is a torch a good first coral?

No. Keep a hammer or frogspawn healthy for a few months first. That is the best test of whether your tank is ready.

What is the difference between Aussie, Malaysian and Indo torches?

It describes where the line came from, not the color. Aussie torches are generally thicker-tentacled and slower. Malaysian and Indo lines tend to have longer, more flowing tentacles.

Why does my torch look different from the photo?

Tip color shifts with lighting and water chemistry, and shipping stress makes a torch look closed or pale for a few days. The photo guarantees which animal you get. Your tank decides the exact color.

Should I dip a torch?

Yes, the Euphyllia way: half strength, half the time, no basting. Inspect the plug and skeleton while you are at it.

Do you ship to my state?

Anywhere in the lower 48, UPS Next Day Air on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We do not ship anything to Alaska or Hawaii.

What if it arrives dead?

Photograph the animal inside the unopened bag within 4 hours of UPS delivery confirmation and send it to us with your order number. The details are on our Live Arrival Guarantee page.

How it ships from Key West

Torches ship UPS Next Day Air on Tuesdays and Wednesdays only, so no box sits in a hub over a weekend. We ship to the lower 48. We do not ship to Alaska or Hawaii.

• Shipping charge: $30 for qualifying Florida livestock orders under 6 lb, and $50 elsewhere in the lower 48. The shipping charge is per order.
• Free livestock transportation: on qualifying livestock subtotals of $299 or more. WYSIWYG pieces count toward the $299. Dry goods do not.
• Box & Handling Fee: $10 per livestock box, and it still applies on orders with free livestock transportation. A box carries up to 6 lb of packed livestock. Heavier orders go out in additional boxes, each with its own $10 fee. The fee covers the insulated liner, temperature packs matched to your forecast, and breather bags.
• Weather: if conditions at either end put the animals at risk, we hold the box and contact you.
• Live arrival: if something arrives dead, photograph the animal inside the unopened bag within 4 hours of UPS delivery confirmation and send it with your order number.

Keep reading

• Torch Coral Care Guide: anatomy, the fleshband, placement and problems
• Why Is My Torch Coral Not Extending?: the full diagnostic, flatworms and brown jelly
• Torch vs Hammer vs Frogspawn
• New Coral Not Opening After Shipping
• Hammer Coral Losing Heads
• Hammer corals · Frogspawn corals · All LPS corals · WYSIWYG corals