Sinularia brassica (Cabbage Leather Coral)

Source: liveaquaria.com

QUICK STATS

• Care Level: Easy
  
• Temperament: Semi-aggressive
  
• Lighting: Moderate to High
  
• Waterflow: Medium to Strong
  
• Placement: Top
  
• Water Conditions: 72-78° F, dKH 8-12, pH 8.1-8.4, sg 1.023-1.025
  
• Color Form: Tan
  
• Origin: Fiji, Indo-Pacific, Maldives
  
• Family: Alcyoniidae
  
• Insert Date: 18 september 2010

The Cabbage Leather Coral is also referred to as Flat Leather Coral, Flower Leather Coral, or Carpet Coral. It is found in a variety of colors, usually tan to brown with lighter striations. Its flat, lobed appearance resembles a cabbage leaf.
It is semi-aggressive and needs space between itself and other corals in the reef aquarium. Some species are toxic to stony corals. It is very easy to maintain in the reef aquarium and makes an excellent coral for the beginning to expert reef aquarist. It requires medium to high lighting combined with moderate to strong water movement. Fluorescent lighting should be combined with actinic lighting. For continued good health, it requires the addition of strontium, iodine, and other trace elements to the water.

It is an encrusting coral that will reproduce easily on its own in the reef aquarium by budding (splitting off a portion of its base).

Cabbage Leather Corals contain the symbiotic algae zooxanthellae and receive the majority of their nutritional needs from the light driven process of photosynthesis. It will also be beneficial to supplement the diet with additional food such as micro-plankton, baby brine shrimp, or foods designed for filter feeding invertebrates.

Links:

Through a forum I found someone selling his whole aquarium. We wanted to take a look and see if he had anything that we liked. His aquarium looked really nice, it was a big tank that wasn’t very high but mainly very deep. The rocks where all low, not really build up and almost every rock was covered in Xenia.
For the moment we left with 3 rocks filled with corals, maybe we are going back to get some more (fish maybe even, he had some nice ones). The easiest choice which I liked a lot was a rock with Ricordea mushrooms. My wife still likes Xenia and since ours is not much anymore we also took a rock with Xenia and some purple mushrooms. And last we also wanted a new Cabbage leather coral, so he torn one loose with a Kenya tree also on it.

Unfortunately there where no pictures of his aquarium.

18 september we bought this piece of Cabbage leather together with a Kenya tree. The coral was attached on 2 rocks, so he had to rip it off. The coral is a bit damaged and looks rather sad at the moment, but we have good hope it will recover soon.

The Cabbage leather coral seems to be still recovering. It doesn’t look as good as it should yet, from time to time it’s a bit gray. Hopefully this will change in time.

At first I wanted to cut some branches from the Kenya Tree and make it smaller that way, but yesterday I talked it over again with my wife and we decided it would be a shame, since it looks so great now. We are going to sell it in whole for that reason. We already have a great Kenya Tree and I also have a great Cabbage leather in the Fragtank if we still want that.

Tuesday we sold both of them for 25 euro's