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The holotype has yellow and purple sclerites with an elongated colour arrangement that gives the colony a bicoloured (yellow and purple) appearance, this colour morph was mostly discovered at depths of 10 - 20 metres.
Recommendation - the coral should be kept in a species-specific tank.
Feeding
Gorgonians do not have zooxanthellae and do not live off light. Azooxanthellate gorgonians do not host symbiotic algae that produce nutrients and energy through photosynthesis.
The pumps should be switched off before feeding. In order for the gorgonian to survive in the aquarium, each individual polyp must be fed sufficiently, i.e. daily or 3-4 times a week. Without feeding, the gorgonian will not survive in the aquarium. The polyps need a certain amount of time to absorb the food (granules or dust food (Ultramarin, Cyclop Eeze) or frozen food (lobster eggs, mysis)). If shrimp and fish are present, they will try to steal the food, so it is essential to feed these cohabitants beforehand.
Newly introduced gorgonian sticks can be stimulated with a liquid food, e.g., PolypLab Polyp, to encourage the individual polyps to open. Only then can feeding be carried out.
The better the individual polyps take up the food provided, the better the growth and reproduction rates will be.
Azooxanthellate corals eat suspensions, marine snow, microplankton, and other organic matter, which is their natural food.
In the paratype NMNH-1638553, there has also been a mixing of sclerites, one colony has the major proportion of purple sclerites compared to white, and the other colony has a major proportion of white compared to purple sclerites.
Purple colonies were mostly observed in shallow waters < 5 m depth, while the bicoloured colonies were mostly encountered at 7 - 8 m depth.
The paratype NMNH-1638554 was monochromatic white.
Leptogorgia iridis has been named after the Latin word "iridis", meaning "rainbow", due to the large number of chromotypes observed in the colonies. The large number of chromotypes is one of the most important diagnostic features of this new tropical species.
Source:
https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/50619/list/8/
Hernández O, Gomez-Gutiérrez J, Sánchez C (2021)
Three new species of the sea fan genus Leptogorgia (Octocorallia, Gorgoniidae) from the Gulf of California, Mexico.
ZooKeys 1017: 1-20. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1017.50619
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Recommendation - the coral should be kept in a species-specific tank.
Feeding
Gorgonians do not have zooxanthellae and do not live off light. Azooxanthellate gorgonians do not host symbiotic algae that produce nutrients and energy through photosynthesis.
The pumps should be switched off before feeding. In order for the gorgonian to survive in the aquarium, each individual polyp must be fed sufficiently, i.e. daily or 3-4 times a week. Without feeding, the gorgonian will not survive in the aquarium. The polyps need a certain amount of time to absorb the food (granules or dust food (Ultramarin, Cyclop Eeze) or frozen food (lobster eggs, mysis)). If shrimp and fish are present, they will try to steal the food, so it is essential to feed these cohabitants beforehand.
Newly introduced gorgonian sticks can be stimulated with a liquid food, e.g., PolypLab Polyp, to encourage the individual polyps to open. Only then can feeding be carried out.
The better the individual polyps take up the food provided, the better the growth and reproduction rates will be.
Azooxanthellate corals eat suspensions, marine snow, microplankton, and other organic matter, which is their natural food.
In the paratype NMNH-1638553, there has also been a mixing of sclerites, one colony has the major proportion of purple sclerites compared to white, and the other colony has a major proportion of white compared to purple sclerites.
Purple colonies were mostly observed in shallow waters < 5 m depth, while the bicoloured colonies were mostly encountered at 7 - 8 m depth.
The paratype NMNH-1638554 was monochromatic white.
Leptogorgia iridis has been named after the Latin word "iridis", meaning "rainbow", due to the large number of chromotypes observed in the colonies. The large number of chromotypes is one of the most important diagnostic features of this new tropical species.
Source:
https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/50619/list/8/
Hernández O, Gomez-Gutiérrez J, Sánchez C (2021)
Three new species of the sea fan genus Leptogorgia (Octocorallia, Gorgoniidae) from the Gulf of California, Mexico.
ZooKeys 1017: 1-20. https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.1017.50619
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
