Various Color Softies - Need Suggestions

[deneed4spd]

Have a 75g RR. I wanted to create a colorful softie display and was wondering what type of softie corals I should look at?

Right now I have various zoas, a purple tip hammer and frogspawn. A toadstool. Getting a purple xenia and couple orange mushrooms.

What are great colored softies that pop! Are there any duncans that are yellow or orange? Looking for more yellows, oranges, greens, etc.

Thoughts?

[ReefingSAW]

rocordia shroom come is many colors:beerchug:

[Reefer Sutherland]

softies only? Because hammer is LPS , I like acans a lot, lots of.great co lo rs.

[Brent1128]

Find nanofins on here and look through his webpage...you'll find everything you want and then some.

[David Grigor]

bright greens ( toadstools, nepthia types ) and yellows ( devils hand and sarcophyton elegans but true bright yellows need more 10k, most people run bluer tanks now days ) are about the best you can do with leathers. most of the others are going to be varying of brownish. Colts are one of my favs for a more pinkish but not really true pink. IME: True leather lovers it's as more about different textures and polyps variations than color. Lots of leathers that are called red really are more of a brown to me.

Zoanthids there are lots of color variations and varieties. Ricordia and other mushrooms can help fill some voids for orange.

Some nice gorgonians ( be sure to find photosynthetic ones ) that are purple.

[deneed4spd]

Anyone here have experience with dendrophyllia? I like how they are brightly colored but heard they have to be hand fed from what I see online.

[David Grigor]

I have one for close to a year. It still just one polyp but then again I don't spot feed it. Just one more thing to do, if you like to tinker and feed often, they seem to do pretty well in tanks.

[Fragtastic Reef]

You can get some crazy softies and colors. Yellow toadstools are really bright and nice looking. Plus you can do Zoas, rics, xenia, and mix some LPS in there also if you want. LPS is good to have in a softy tank also since you can use them to control the softies from spreading out of control.

[deneed4spd]

Never thought of using my lps to control shrooms and xenias.

I currently have a tan toadstool leather. Is the yellow toadstool that much brighter?

[David Grigor]

No comparison. For toadstools, there are some insane green polyped or bright yellow. All others would not make the cut in my tank.

IMO: Yellow sarcophyton elegans, you really need to see it before buying. So many are tagged as yellow figi leather and are not wysiwyg and you end up with brownish yellow trying to mailorder. There are some insane bananna yellow ones but are about one out of every 100+ and usually the price dictates as well ( anything less then $80 is a good deal, really nice ones easily can be $100+ ). To maintain the bright yellow it needs pretty intense and more of a 10K, most people run tanks much more blue now days which makes any yellow less impressive.

There are some decent yellow devils hands but never seen one as bright yellow as you can get from the nice hand picked elegans.


While green colors tend to be a time a dozen, if you want a bright green leather, there are some really nices ones that commonly go by the name of mumps they also need pretty intense bright light to really maintain.

Pink leathers best you will probably find are Colt corals. Like everything some are nicer than others so it's okay to be pickey and wait for the right one.

Not aware of any orange or true red leathers. Chili coral is nice and red, there are some nice orange and pink carnations but all of these are non-photosynthetic. so best to target zoanthids, mushrooms, ricordia for those.