War Coral

War Coral, a reference illustration of the classic phenotype rather than a photograph of one coral

Favites pentagona, an LPS coral. Beginner to keep, typical PAR 75–150, moderate flow.

Also sold as War Favites, Red War Coral, Favites Pentagona.

A species, not a named morph. It names the animal, not one line of it.

Collector tier: common, where the trade ranks it from common through grail. In stock at 19 surveyed shops on 2026-10-19.

Favites pentagona, an encrusting to submassive brain-type coral with thin-walled, angular corallites packed edge to edge, each with a conspicuous crown of paliform lobes inside the wall. The trade form is a red body with lime-green oral discs; the wild species is brown or red with green discs. It encrusts rock and occasionally throws up irregular columns, and in the wild colonies pass a metre across. Named variants (Tyree, Australian painted, bi-colour, fire and ice) are colour forms of the same species.

Before you buy one

Green mouths in red, in a shared-wall honeycomb. The corallites touch along shared walls, which is what separates a Favites from a Favia, whose corallites each have their own wall with a groove between. The paliform crown inside each corallite is what gives it a passing resemblance to Goniastrea, which the trade also sells as war coral now and then. It is semi-aggressive: sweeper tentacles reach well past the base at night, so a war coral with a bare ring of dead neighbours around it is behaving normally.

Keeping LPS of this kind

Sandbed or low rock with room around it, and it takes food. War Coral is beginner to keep at a typical PAR of 75–150 in moderate flow. A typical starting range for this type of coral, not measured on this one.

Full care notes for LPS of this kind

What War Coral goes for

No verified sales yet. A range publishes once 3 dated, checkable records from 3 different sources exist, priced per frag and reported as a median, with what shops ask kept separate from what buyers paid. One frag is a single cut on a plug, whatever its exact size. Colonies, mini colonies and mother stock are excluded rather than averaged in. Nothing on this page is for sale. Shops are typically asking $23 to $54 per frag, median $36, across 19 shops surveyed on 2026-10-19; the full sweep ran $14 to $180. Asking prices are what sellers want, not what buyers paid. On 2026-10-19 it was in stock at 19 surveyed shops: austinaquafarms.com, bcpcorals.com, bluewaterreefaquatics.com, cherrycorals.com, coralsanonymous.com, coralscoral.com, and 13 more.

All shops in the survey.

Easily confused with