False Flower Coral

About

False Flower Coral (Anacropora forbesi) is a branching coral from the Indo-West Pacific that won't win any color contests but rewards close inspection with a clean, architectural growth form. The branches are slender, evenly spaced, and taper to blunt tips, all sitting on a smooth coenosteum. Coloration is mostly pale brown with white tips at the branch ends. Understated compared to many reef corals, but with a sculptural quality that works well in the right system. In the wild it turns up across a surprisingly broad range of conditions, from shallow, turbid reef zones to deeper soft substrates and occasionally the exposed upper slopes of reefs, at depths down to around 25 meters. That ecological flexibility might suggest an easy-going coral, but it's genuinely a species for experienced reefers. It requires consistently high light and strong, well-directed flow to stay healthy, and like most Anacropora species it is sensitive to the kinds of parameter swings that a newer reef tank tends to produce. Get the conditions right, though, and it develops into an interesting structural piece that stands apart from the more common branching SPS corals in the hobby.