Dipsastraea Brain Coral

Description

You are buying the exact coral in the photo — a WYSIWYG Dipsastraea photographed under blue spectrum reef lighting. This piece shows deep teal-and-magenta valleys running between raised ridges that fire electric green at the mouths, the kind of contrast that only reads this hard under actinics. conditioned in our Key West systems, Florida.

About Dipsastraea Brain Coral (Dipsastraea sp.)

Dipsastraea — the genus split out from the old “Favia” group — is a hardy, encrusting LPS brain that rewards steady water with slow, satisfying growth and jaw-dropping fluorescence. Each corallite is its own little mouth, so a colony reads like a field of glowing craters. Conditioned in our Key West systems stock like this is already adjusted to captive lighting and flow, so it settles in far faster than a wild import and carries none of the pest risk.

Care Guide

An excellent intermediate LPS that rewards stability over chasing numbers.

• Lighting: Low-Medium — PAR 75–150. Too much light mutes the color; find the spot where it glows.
• Flow: Low-Medium — enough to keep detritus off the flesh, not enough to strip its feeder tentacles.
• Placement: Lower-to-mid rockwork.
• Feeding: Medium — accepts fine meaty foods after dark when feeder tentacles emerge.
• Aggression: Semi — extends short night sweepers; give it a couple inches of space.
• Water Parameters: Temp 76–78°F, salinity 1.025–1.026, Alk 8–9 dKH, Ca 420–440, Mg 1300–1400. Stability matters more than exact numbers.

Ships UPS Next Day Air every Tuesday and Wednesday from Key West, Florida. Packed with an insulated box and a heat or cold pack appropriate for current conditions. Specimen is carefully secured to prevent movement during transit.

Placement: Lower-to-mid rockwork where flow is gentle and light is moderate.

Not sure how to keep it? See the large polyp stony corals in our Coral Field Guide — ID notes, PAR, flow, placement and aggression, next to the corals people mistake them for.

UPS Next Day Air · Live Arrival Guaranteed. See current rates, ship days and how a claim works.

What to expect when it arrives

Brain corals arrive with tissue pulled tight against the skeleton and the corallite structure showing clearly. Float the sealed bag 15 minutes, drip acclimate 30 to 45 minutes, and place the coral low in moderate light and moderate flow. Tissue inflation returns over one to three days.

Placement, and the aggression nobody plans for

These are among the most aggressive corals in a mixed reef and almost nobody accounts for it when placing them. Favia, Favites, Platygyra and their relatives send out sweeper tentacles at night that reach several inches past the daytime footprint and will chemically burn whatever they touch. Judge spacing by what the coral does after lights out, not by how it looks at noon. Four to six inches of clear space in every direction is a sensible minimum.

Feeding and growth

Brains take small meaty food readily and thicken visibly for it. Feed two or three times a week after lights out when the feeder tentacles are already extended and the coral will take food without a fight. Growth is steady rather than fast — expect the colony to encrust outward across its base over months.

Common trouble

A bare patch or dark stripe spreading across the dome is usually mechanical damage from a neighbor rather than disease. Check sweeper range before treating for anything. Skeleton showing between corallites with no obvious cause generally means light that is too strong for where the coral sits.

Compatibility

Excellent for a beginner on husbandry, difficult for a beginner on placement. They will win almost any exchange, so the risk is to the neighbors rather than to the brain itself.