Green & White Pipe Organ, Tubipora musica, colonies have red upright parallel skeleton tubes connected on horizontal platforms. Each Parallel tube contains a beautiful pipe organ polyp. These tubes are actually sclerites. The sclerites are fused together to form the skeleton of the tubipora musica rather than being a hard calcareous skeleton like that found on stony corals. The skeleton is a beautiful bright or dark red color. Its polyps are housed inside the many tubes, and the red skeleton is usually hidden when its polyps are extended. Yet the polyps themselves provide a striking contrast to the tubes with numerous color variations of white, silver, and green found on different specimens.
Aggressiveness
The Organ Pipe Coral is peaceful and is usually fine within proximity to other corals that are peaceful. They will not bother nearby corals since they do not have sweeper tentacles. T. musica may have small commensal shrimp, tiny bristle worms, or sponge living between the little tubes of calcite or within empty tubes.
Water Flow and Lighting
They prefer a moderate level of water movement, and a moderate lighting level. Lighting can be Power compacts, T5's, LED's or even Metal Halides. Any lighting will work as long as the proper level of light is provided. If a Par meter is available the appropriate lighting level is anywhere from a Par 150 all the way to a Par 250. Which is a wide range of acceptability. For lighting spectrum use between a 14-20K color spectrum for your bulbs for best coloration.
Placement
The Organ Pipe Coral may be placed anywhere which provides the required moderate water flow and moderate lighting level.
Diet and Feeding
In captivity, the Organ Pipe Coral will generally use bright light and zooxanthellae as their main food source, although Marine Snow, Artemia nauplii, rotifers and other fine particulate foods should supplemented. If your lighting is weak, the feedings will be more important since they will not be developing as much zooxanthellae on their own. A refugium with at least a 4" sand bed is strongly suggested to help provide for all your corals.
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