Tipped Bubblegum Coral

About

Tipped bubblegum coral (Physogyra lichtensteini) is one of those corals that looks completely different depending on what time you observe it. During daylight hours, the entire colony surface is blanketed in swollen, grape-sized vesicles that give it that characteristic bubbly, inflated appearance. Come nightfall, those vesicles retract and the coral extends its feeding tentacles instead. Touch the colony and the vesicles will pull back quickly, revealing the underlying skeletal structure beneath. The colony form is massive and meandroid, with broad, well-separated valleys running across the surface and large, widely spaced septa. Coloration tends toward pale grey, occasionally with a dull greenish cast. Not a particularly flashy coral, but its texture more than makes up for that. In the wild, this species turns up across a wide stretch of the Indo-West Pacific, from the Red Sea and Japan down through to Australia and east to Fiji, typically in turbid reef zones rather than pristine clear-water environments. That tolerance for murkier conditions actually translates reasonably well to captivity. In the aquarium it does best under moderate lighting and gentle, low flow. Strong currents can stress it. It sits comfortably in the intermediate care category, worth attempting once you have some LPS experience under your belt.