A reference for named coral morphs: what each one actually is, how to tell it from its lookalikes, and what it is really priced at. Nothing here is for sale.
65 morphs, each with identification notes, care requirements and two separate price layers. Asking prices, read from shops' own catalogues on 2026-09-07, currently cover 57 of the 65 and publish from 3 shops up. Verified sold ranges are slower on purpose: each stays empty until 3 dated, checkable sales exist for that morph, and what shops ask is never mixed into what buyers paid.
Shops rate the same coral differently and sometimes rate one coral two ways on the same page, so these are judged against the definitions below rather than counted up from listings. Rarity is not difficulty: an expensive coral is not a harder one.
Wide tolerance. It does not need a particular spot, it does not need feeding to survive, and it forgives the swings a normally run tank produces. Losing one is usually a sign something was wrong with the tank rather than with the coral.
Needs something specific. A placement it will not thrive outside of, tighter stability than routine, regular feeding, or careful acclimation. It will not die from one bad week, but it will sulk, recede or lose colour until the specific thing is right.
A narrow margin, or a job. Either it fails quickly when conditions move, in the way SPS do, or keeping it alive is ongoing specialised work: a sun coral is not delicate, it is fed polyp by polyp several times a week and starves without that.
A sale counts when its source shows the coral, the price paid and the date, and a stranger can open it: an auction result, a live-sale post with the sold price, a marketplace listing marked sold, a forum sold thread. A private screenshot cannot be checked, so a private sale needs the ad it was sold from plus the amount.
Whoever reports a sale says whether they bought it, sold it or saw it, and the band discloses how many of its records came from sellers. Sellers are the people who have receipts; banning them would empty the book, not clean it.
A report lands in a queue, someone reads the source and checks it says what the report says, and only then is the line added. An auto-publishing price form is a vendor tool, because the cheapest way to move a range is to report your own asking price three times.
A sold range publishes at three dated, checked records, counted by source rather than by report: three sales from one seller are one source, and one seller cannot set a range any more than one shop can set an asking band.
Low to middle rock with enough flow to keep detritus off the mat. They creep across whatever they touch, so leave a bare margin around them.
Photosynthetic and largely self-sufficient. They take fine particulate and respond to broadcast feeding, but nothing needs to be aimed at them.
No sweeper tentacles. They win by encroachment, growing over a slower neighbour, and Palythoa are worse for it than Zoanthus.
The easiest propagation in the hobby: cut the mat between polyps with a scalpel, or lay a frag plug alongside and let them walk onto it.
A colony that stays shut is usually telling you about flow, detritus settling on the mat, or a predator, so check at night with a torch for nudibranchs and sundial snails. 'Zoa pox' is a looser thing and worth separating from that: the name covers white or yellow bumps that several unrelated causes produce, none of them established, so treating it as a pest problem is a guess rather than a diagnosis. On handling, treat every zoanthid and paly as potentially carrying palytoxin, Palythoa most of all: gloves and eye protection, keep the work wet, and never boil, steam or scrub a colony indoors. The documented poisonings are overwhelmingly people cleaning rock rather than people keeping coral.
Checked against: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, sahealth.sa.gov.au, mantasystems.net, ncceh.ca
Low light and gentle flow for most of them, on the sandbed or a shaded ledge. Too much of either and they stay curled shut. Ricordea is the exception on light and takes more than a Discosoma or Rhodactis will, though it wants the same gentle flow: strong current is what detaches a mushroom and sends it into a powerhead.
Photosynthetic. Larger Rhodactis will close around a small meaty piece, but none of them need it.
Passive but persistent: they detach, drift, and re-attach somewhere they like better.
They divide on their own, which is the reliable route. Cutting works but a stressed mushroom often just melts.
A mushroom that keeps letting go is telling you the spot is wrong, and it is almost always too much flow.
Checked against: reefbuilders.com, tidalgardens.com, saltwateraquariumblog.com
The hobby calls this whole group Euphyllia and this page follows it, because that is the word on every label and in every conversation. Current taxonomy splits it: torches are still Euphyllia, while hammers and frogspawn moved to Fimbriaphyllia in a 2017 revision. Nothing about keeping them changed with the name, but the binomial on a listing might, so each morph's own page carries the current one.
Middle rock or sandbed in gentle flow, enough to make the tentacles sway but not enough to pin them back. Leave a hand's width of clear space.
Photosynthetic and takes meaty food readily. Feeding visibly speeds up head division.
Long sweeper tentacles come out at night, sometimes at twice the daytime reach. Torches sting hammers and frogspawn; keep different Euphyllia species apart unless you know the pairing.
Branching forms cut cleanly between heads with bone cutters. Wall forms do not frag well.
Brown jelly takes a colony in days, so isolate at the first sign. Tissue receding up from the skeleton base is the early warning, and a head torn in shipping is worth watching closely rather than assuming it will knit: damaged tissue is the association the coral-disease work actually supports. What it does not support is a nutrient cause. Ciliates are always present in the jelly and it remains unsettled whether they drive it or arrive after, and if anything the reef literature ties disease susceptibility to nutrient ENRICHMENT rather than to lean water. Euphyllia do want some nutrients in the water, but that is a separate matter from this one.
Checked against: marinespecies.org, mantasystems.net, saltwateraquariumblog.com, reefchasers.com
Top third of the rock, strong random flow, and stability in everything. This is the most demanding group in the hobby and the least forgiving of swings.
Photosynthetic with some amino and particulate uptake. Stability matters far more than any feeding regime.
Short sweepers, but they grow fast enough to shade and starve whatever is beneath them.
Snap or cut a branch and glue it to a plug; it encrusts within weeks in good conditions.
STN and RTN strip a colony from the base up, sometimes overnight, and neither has an established cause. Vibrio bacteria turn up repeatedly in affected tissue without that being settled, and heat, chemistry swings and rough handling all precede outbreaks without any of them explaining every case. So treat sudden recession as an emergency rather than a diagnosis: check temperature, what changed in the last few days, and pests, before dosing anything at it. Stability is the stressor most within your control, which is why the dosing calculator caps the daily rate of change. Also inspect and dip for AEFW and red bugs.
Checked against: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, bulkreefsupply.com, reefbuilders.com, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Mid to upper rock. Plating forms need clear space to plate into; encrusting forms need a rock they can have to themselves.
Photosynthetic. Nothing needs to be target-fed.
Not chemically aggressive, but a plate will shade out anything that ends up underneath it.
Snap a plate edge or cut with a saw. Among the easiest SPS to propagate.
Montipora-eating nudibranchs are tiny, white, and coloured to match the coral. Inspect the underside of every new frag and dip it before it goes in.
Lower rock or sandbed, low to moderate light, gentle flow.
Responds strongly to target feeding after dark, when the feeder tentacles come out.
Among the most aggressive corals kept. Long sweepers, and they will kill an Acropora placed downstream. Give them a wide berth in every direction.
Cut through the skeleton with a saw; they encrust and recover well.
Colour and pattern change substantially between a frag and a mature colony, so an early photo rarely represents the animal you end up with.
Sandbed or low rock, moderate light, low flow so the flesh is not blasted back.
Takes meaty food straight to the mouth and grows visibly faster for it, one of the most rewarding corals to feed.
Short sweepers. It will sting an immediate neighbour, but not across the tank.
Cut between heads with a saw, or snap along the corallite wall.
Flesh receding from the edges of a head usually means too much flow, or a fish nipping at it.
Varies by genus, but most want sandbed or low rock in gentle flow. Free-living species like Trachyphyllia and Fungia belong on sand and abrade themselves if wedged into rockwork.
Most take meaty food and grow faster for it. Tubastraea is the exception that matters: it has no zooxanthellae at all and must be target-fed several times a week, forever, or it starves.
Varies widely. Catalaphyllia carries a serious sting; Duncan and Blastomussa are mild neighbours.
Branching forms cut between heads. Single-polyp animals are not fragged at all.
Across this whole group, tissue pulling back to expose bare skeleton is the general early warning.
Almost anywhere with moderate light and flow. These are the least fussy corals in the hobby, which is precisely the problem.
Mostly photosynthetic. Xenia and clove polyps also absorb dissolved nutrients straight from the water.
Chemical rather than physical: many softies release terpenes that suppress stony-coral growth in a closed system. Run carbon if you mix them with SPS.
Cut and rubber-band to a plug, or let them spread and scrape back the excess.
The risk is not losing them, it is not being able to stop them. Keep the aggressive spreaders on an island rock with a sand moat.
Middle to upper rock with strong flow arriving from the side rather than straight from a pump. These are branching SPS that take less light than an Acropora and more flow than almost anything, because a thicket of fine branches traps detritus the moment the water slows.
Photosynthetic, with polyps that take small particles from the column at night. Fine foods help growth; stability helps more.
None to speak of. They have no sweepers and lose every contact fight, so the spacing is for their protection rather than their neighbours'.
Snap a branch, it breaks cleanly, and glue it upright to a plug. The brittleness that makes shipping them nerve-racking makes fragging them trivial.
Tissue receding from the base, or browning across the colony. A brown Birds Nest is short of light and a pale one has too much, but the more common cause of loss is detritus settling into the tangle where flow cannot reach, so if the base is dying, move the coral or the pump before touching the lights.
Checked against: coralsoftheworld.org, reefchasers.com, fragbox.ca