What color is sea fan coral?
The color of this coral varies, depending on the species and whether or not symbiotic algae are living inside the sea fan. Colors typically range from yellow to red, with the polyps located along the branching arms of the fan.
Is sea fan coral hard or soft?
Sea fans are a type of soft coral that are often found in warm waters and around reefs. There are also soft corals that live in deep waters. Sea fans are colonial animals that have a beautiful, branching structure that is covered by soft tissue.
What type of coral are sea fans?
sea fan, (genus Gorgonia), any member of a genus of invertebrate marine animals of the suborder Holaxonia (class Anthozoa, phylum Cnidaria). It is a variety of coral composed of numerous polyps—cylindrical sessile (attached) forms—that grow together in a flat fanlike pattern.
What does fan coral do?
Usage. Coral fans and dead coral fans can be used for building or as a decoration block.
What do sea fan coral eat?
plankton
Most Sea Fans are nocturnal, only extending their polyps during the nighttime hours. They consume plankton and require strong currents to carry their food.
What does soft coral look like?
Soft corals, like sea fingers and sea whips, are soft and bendable and often resemble plants or trees. These corals do not have stony skeletons and are non-reef-building corals—instead, they grow wood-like cores and fleshy rinds for protection.
What does fan coral look like?
These corals grow into a flat fan shape and can be more than six feet (2 m) in diameter. The common sea fan is usually purple but can also be gray or sometimes yellow. When it extends its polyps, the sea fan looks fuzzy brown. You can find the common sea fan close to the surface and down to 100 feet (30 m).
What do fan coral eat?
zooplankton
The algae live within the coral polyps, using sunlight to make sugar for energy. This energy is transferred to the polyp, providing much needed nourishment. In turn, coral polyps provide the algae with carbon dioxide and a protective home. Corals also eat by catching tiny floating animals called zooplankton.
Do gorgonians like high flow?
Gorgonians tend to live in moderate-to-high flow areas on the reef. It will not be a surprise to you then, to conclude that they will do best, in the home aquarium, in moderate-to-high water flow areas.
Are sea fans hard to keep?
Don’t Let Your Sea Fans (Gorgonians) be stung! Photosynthetic gorgonians are fairly easy to keep, but many corals can sting and damage the tissue of the Sea fan (Gorgonian). So make sure you keep them at a distance from other corals to prevent stinging.
What is fan coral?
What is Fan Coral? Fan coral is sometimes called sea fans. Fan coral is a type of coral which develops a highly branched flexible skeleton which often comes to closely resemble a fan, albeit a rather inefficient one.
What are sea fans made of?
In the case of sea fans, the polyps use bromine, iodine, and tyrosine to create a flexible substance known as gorgonin. The surface of the coral tends to be rough and slightly horny, and it is resilient in addition to flexible, ensuring that sea fans can withstand heavy currents.
How do fan corals reproduce?
These corals reproduce by mass-spawning eggs and sperm, which fuse in the water to become gametes. The gametes free-float until they find an area of sand or mud to settle in. There are over 500 species of fan coral, most of which are found in the Atlantic. These corals can live to be hundreds of years old, and they are very slow growing.
How long do corals live?
These corals can live to be hundreds of years old, and they are very slow growing. This type of coral is also extremely vulnerable to human interference, as careless divers can break off arms, destroying decades of growth, and trawlers routinely rip out the coral as they dredge the bottom of the ocean for fish.