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Scolymia Corals

Scolymia corals, often shortened to “Scolys” by hobbyists and pros alike, who love to crop syllables from proper coral names, are native to the Indo-Pacific. They tend to be loners that prefer shaded areas of coral reefs with indirect light and medium, shifting water flows. The living tissue of a healthy Scolymia coral should extend well over the calcareous skeleton that it slowly builds as it grows. When shopping for Scolys online or your LFS, make sure to avoid specimens that have retracted tissue that exposes part of the skeleton. This usually indicates that the coral has been damaged or is otherwise stressed. Scolys can occasionally recover from this but it requires patience, care and experience.

Scolymia Coral Care Guide

Experience Level

Beginner to Intermediate. Scolymia corals should only be acclimated to fully cycled systems with stable WQ parameters.

Optimal Water Quality Parameters for Scolymia

Temperature: 77-82F, 25-28C
pH: 8.1-8.3
dKH: 7-11 (125-200ppm CaCO3 equivalent)
Calcium: 375-450ppm
Magnesium: 1275-1350ppm
Salinity: 35ppt
Ammonia (NH3): less than 0.1ppm
Nitrite (NO2): less than 0.2ppm
Nitrate (NO3): less than 0.2ppm
Phosphates (PO4): less than 0.03ppm

Scolymia Lighting Preferences:

Moderate to lower diffuse lighting, no direct lighting unless deeper in the water column. Precisely how much your Scoly needs to be happy and healthy depends on the type of lighting on your reef tank and the depth of the display. Begin with a location on the substrate just out of direct light. Then slowly experiment with more lighting over time, making sure to allow at least two weeks to observe and for the photosynthetic zooxanthellae algae to adjust before moving to a new location. Patience is key.

Scolymia Water Flow Preferences:

Scolymia tend to prefer medium, softly shifting water current. They will not tolerate direct flows for very long. If placed in an area with current not to its liking, a Scoly will purge water from its tissue and retract it to protect itself from damage.

Scolymia Placement Considerations:

Scolys can be moderately aggressive and will deploy their mesentery filaments, or stinging tentacles, to protect their living space and digest encroaching neighbors. Aggressive neighbors can also sting the delicate fleshy tissue or mantle of this coral, so make sure your Scolys have plenty of space around them.

Scolymia Feeding Considerations:

Feeding Scolys is fun, as their food response transforms their appearance quite a bit. The feeding tentacles deploy and become turgid as they sting, trap and slowly consume the food. In the wild, this mostly happens at night. To induce this response, take a pipette and softly squirt some juice from thawed brine or mysis shrimp or other LPS foods. As the coral opens, gently squirt or place some food near or on the tentacles. Small, easily digestable foods are preferred. Scolys tend to feed slowly, so feed the rest of your system first to reduce poaching.

A word of caution: as fun as it is to feed Scolymia, care must be taken not to overfeed these corals or try to feed them a chunk of food that is too large for them to digest. This can be very stressful and kill your Scoly. Also, never place or squirt food directly into the body cavity.

High-Quality Online Scolymia Corals from CoralFrags.com

All our Scolymia corals are double-checked before shipping to ensure they are happy, healthy and not concealing unwanted reef pests. Healthy specimens along with accurate care information for all the online corals we sell to our clients is how we built our business and is central to our business philosophy. Thanks very much for trusting CoralFrags.com. You’re the reason why we have become one of the most trusted online coral sellers on the Web!

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