How do you ID corals

[sweat044]

I am horrible with names of corals. I am getting some new ones and I wondered how everyone else kept them straight. I was thinking of writting on the bottom of the frag with a sharpie. Would the sharpie hurt anything in the tank?

 

[cottoncandyMonster]

At the ocean explorium we have kids make frags and they wright there names with a marker on the plug and no probs yet ....in time you will remember them all with out marking them ..also thrive plugs come with tags to name them ..maybe look into those ..good luck !!

 

[kes]

there are many sites online to look up certain types of corals, compare pics, etc. coralpedia is just one of them. ;-)

 

[Palting]

Easy enough if you are buying the coral, since the coral are usually ID'd before you buy them. Make a list as you go along, take a photo too if you want, and you'll be able to keep which coral is called what. No good to mark the bottom of the frag, since it will either fade or get covered.

Much more difficult if you are referring to coral you see in the wild and want to specifically ID them. Even the experts often do not agree!!

For fun, and this is a fun hobby, you can purchase a book and compare your specimens with what's in the book. A fun read is "Aquarium Corals: Selection, Husbandry, and Natural History" by eric Borneman. If you REALLY want to get into it, there are taxonomy books, but these are no fun at all and are quite expensive.

 

[mcarroll]

Corals of the World by Veron is a great reference...maybe the most comprehensive volume on the subject and tons of pictures.

Another perspective is that if you are buying corals faster than you can remember their names, you are taking it too fast. Going fast rarely nets good results.

-Matt

-Matt