Stereonephthyais an uncommon soft coral which is seriously underrated, both as an aquarium coral, and as a unique member of the coral reef community. The simplest way to describeStereonephthya是光合作用的恋爱Nephthea和non-photosyntheticDendronephthya, both in appearance, and in life history.
Colonies ofStereonephthyadon’t usually grow very tall, with branches usually maxing out at around 12 to 18 cm high before growing more offshoots from the base. This genus has been erroneously referred to asNeospongodes在水族馆文献中，后一个属与广泛的范围相比，严格是加勒比海流行的Stereonephthyaof the Indo-Pacific. In 2005 a new genus was erected,Chromonephthea，成立了几个成员Stereonephthya和other Nephtheid genera, but we’re just going to stick to talking about ‘Stereos’.
This unassuming soft coral is not all that common in the wild, and even when it is found it rarely forms the kind of large colonies ofNephthea和Dendronephthyathat are very abundant on most coral reef habitats. While on our前往桑巴岛的探险Indonesia, we had the good fortune of diving one particular reef site on whichStereonephthyawas particularly well represented, in abundance and diversity.
在我们观察到的这个浅珊瑚礁地点Stereonephthyaincludin在许多不同的颜色g pink, purple, golden yellow, white, and a white specimen with beautifully yellow sclerites. While Stereos are photosynthetic, their tissue is not particularly well populated with zooxanthellae and it’s safe to say that this group of soft corals appreciates a generous amount of food to capture in the water.
Stereos are easy to keep in the aquarium, being undemanding of light levels, but they don’t tend to grow all that fast in modern coral reef aquaria. This latter fact is probably due to aquarists generally trying to keep their water as clean as possible, but a more nutrient rich aquarium with regular feeding of phytoplankton and small size zooplankton ought to encourage them to grow better and faster.
We occasionally see Stereos imported into the aquarium hobby, sometimes even as maricultured specimens, but their popularity has never reached a tipping point to where captive grown frags are regularly available. Hopefully this gallery of the beautifulStereonephthyawe documented in Sumbawa will inspire some of you to keep a lookout for this soft coral at your LFS, and we hope to see this genus of colorful soft coral better represented in coral aquariums in the future.
