Weird Coral ID please!

[thebookshark]

I picked this up from one of my LFS this week. Owner said it was included in a big frag pack they got in recently but he had no idea what it was. Me either! My current best guess is turbinaria heronensis but these are apparently very rare in the hobby and specimens are collected from the GBR by conservationists/biologists. It also isn’t the same color as any of the images I’ve seen of this coral online- I used a blue light filter lens for these photos to get the color as best I could; it’s kind of a deep red-brown, maybe eggplant sort of color. The frag is 2” tall. It almost resembles smooth-skinned acros but on a much larger scale. The areas where the polyps would extend (haven’t seen them yet) are 1/3” in diameter. It also seems to have more short branching areas and fewer connected/scrolling areas than the turbinaria. Any suggestions?

 

[Riptideacro]

Branching cyphastra?

 

[cactusreef]

Looks like a branching cyphastrea I recently got at my LFS

 

[davidm777]

It most certainly looks like some sort of purple coral.

 

[thamnasteroid]

Turbinaria heronensis possibly

 

[thamnasteroid]

Branching cyphastra?

not Cyphastrea, no visible costae

 

[jabberkaycee]

It looks like an Acropora Bonsai to me. Give it a lot of light and high flow and see if green polyps come out.

 

[Koty]

Acropora = in latin : hole in the head

 

[jabberkaycee]

It could also be a Turaki.

 

[thamnasteroid]

It looks like an Acropora Bonsai to me. Give it a lot of light and high flow and see if green polyps come out.

note the size of the corallites, Acropora doesn't have corallites this large