How many mouths can Ricordia Florida have at once?

[titlefight13]

I’ve always wondered why my ricordea has 3 mouths yet it showing zero signs of it splitting…
I thought I was two but upon further inspection it’s a single shroom.


***I’ll post better pictures later tonight or tomorrow morning

 

[i cant think]

I’ve always wondered why my ricordea has 3 mouths yet it showing zero signs of it splitting…
I thought I was two but upon further inspection it’s a single shroom.


***I’ll post better pictures later tonight or tomorrow morning

Mine was the same under bluer light, as soon as I put him under whites I now have a rock of Florida. The I believe it’s the same or similar PAR but very different growth.
Not too sure if the white light had something to do with it or the dirtier water, something in my nano was wrong and something in my 4’ was perfect.

 

[titlefight13]

Mine was the same under bluer light, as soon as I put him under whites I now have a rock of Florida. The I believe it’s the same or similar PAR but very different growth.
Not too sure if the white light had something to do with it or the dirtier water, something in my nano was wrong and something in my 4’ was perfect.

Interesting, do you have a mixed reef? How are your other corals doing?
My tank gets around 2-3 hours of white light. Just scared of GHA happening again.

 

[The_Paradox]

My tanks are set up for hard corals so most mushrooms do awful. I do have an accidental Ricordia though that after 3 years got to around 3” with 4-5 mouths and never split. I got tired of looking at it so I manually fragged it into four pieces. A year later I still have 4 Ricordia

 

[Colemansreef]

Ricordias do this it’s normal. Not sure why but the Florida recordias in specific I’ve noticed seem to grow several mouths but one single mushroom it almost looks like a chain of mushrooms next to each other but they’re actually connected. I have a ricordia in my tank right now that in a way acts like a Zoa it’ll grow little legs of tissue out of the side of it and eventually that tissue turns into a tiny mushroom then it’ll disconnect from the original it looks just like zoas growing.

 

[The_Paradox]

Ricordias do this it’s normal. Not sure why but the Florida recordias in specific I’ve noticed seem to grow several mouths but one single mushroom it almost looks like a chain of mushrooms next to each other but they’re actually connected. I have a ricordia in my tank right now that in a way acts like a Zoa it’ll grow little legs of tissue out of the side of it and eventually that tissue turns into a tiny mushroom then it’ll disconnect from the original it looks just like zoas growing.

They can also move which is still super weird to me.

 

[DanyL]

Ricordea Florida is one of my favorite coral(morohs) of all time, and as such I've been reading about them a lot.
To answer your question: 6 mouths.

Where did I get this information from? It was probably some study I've read over the years, but I looked for an answer myself, and thus I remember it well and also observed and confirmed it myself over the years.

They can grow well in all kinds of conditions, they love when you feed them with frozen foods, though they may need to get used to it at first.

They can grow pretty large in an attempt to reach more light, they can also move, detach a bud (grow a small new polyp on top) and more - all to reach better conditions or spread.

Since they are considered kind of a rarity in my country (unlike Yumas), I've been hunting for new morphs for 16 years now, so far I have 7 different colors/morphs in my collection

 

[Colemansreef]

Ricordea Florida is one of my favorite coral(morohs) of all time, and as such I've been reading about them a lot.
To answer your question: 6 mouths.

Where did I get this information from? It was probably some study I've read over the years, but I looked for an answer myself, and thus I remember it well and also observed and confirmed it myself over the years.

They can grow well in all kinds of conditions, they love when you feed them with frozen foods, though they may need to get used to it at first.

They can grow pretty large in an attempt to reach more light, they can also move, detach a bud (grow a small new polyp on top) and more - all to reach better conditions or spread.

Since they are considered kind of a rarity in my country (unlike Yumas), I've been hunting for new morphs for 16 years now, so far I have 7 different colors/morphs in my collection

Nice!! It’s crazy I live in the US but I’m not super close to Florida but in Florida they’re 5 dollar corals where I’m at 20-30 dollars. I wish I could hook you up with some.i love you’re collection though it looks awesome.

 

[DanyL]

Nice!! It’s crazy I live in the US but I’m not super close to Florida but in Florida they’re 5 dollar corals where I’m at 20-30 dollars. I wish I could hook you up with some.i love you’re collection though it looks awesome.

Haha thanks, I appreciate it!

I actually been to RAP Orlando last year, and oh boy it felt like I'm torturing myself for whole 2 days, and than some more in WWC and TSA lol

tbh I was in total shock with the amount of people, vendors, coral varieties, and was even able to get a private tour in WWC's farm which was truly awesome.
You have a really great community in the US, even met some new friends.

Interestingly enough, I've only seen 2 new morphs on sale that I don't have (yet?) in my collection, though I know there are also many that are found only in Cuba, rather than in Florida.

And yes, the more rare variants can cost here between 70 to 100 USD for a tiny polyp, and I did pay these prices to get where I'm at and it's totally worth it

 

[MrGisonni]

Reefgardener.com

 

[i cant think]

Interesting, do you have a mixed reef? How are your other corals doing?
My tank gets around 2-3 hours of white light. Just scared of GHA happening again.

Ive got a mixed system but mainly softies and LPS - SPS won’t grow too easily in that tank.
Here’s a side view, the Florida can be seen just behind the Orange hammer. The Orange mushrooms on the bottom came from my giant colony of Yuma that has been taking over 2-3 rocks since 2020.

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

My tanks are set up for hard corals so most mushrooms do awful. I do have an accidental Ricordia though that after 3 years got to around 3” with 4-5 mouths and never split. I got tired of looking at it so I manually fragged it into four pieces. A year later I still have 4 Ricordia

I can never get my zoas to grow in my LPS dominant system either..

 

[DanyL]

When I slowly made the transition from a softies tank, than to LPS and eventually to SPS dominant tank I too noticed that all my Zoanthids didn’t do well, most melted away and only some survived to this day.

I eventually gave up on them, and also sort of lost interest in them in the past decade or so, until last year when a friend of mine gave me 3 little frags, and surprisingly - they took off, to the point where I now have to frag them regularly.

What changed since than? Likely too much to be able to point out the exact reason, but if I had to guess - it’s probably the fact that I’ve been using the heavy import/heavy export method in the past few years.

This introduces peaks of high NO3/PO4 across the day, and then quickly exported using Biopellets and GFO, which gives the more nutrient hungry corals their food, while also keeps the water quality clean enough for others.

I only now realized I used an older picture of my garden in my previous post, but here is a more recent one (actually, about 10 months old - but it’s the most recent one I have), here you can also see the Zoas that I’ve been given a year ago - they grow quite fast and being heavily fragged once every 2 to 3 months to keep them tidy.

This, including correct placement of corals for the right flow and lighting conditions is in my opinion the key for managing a thriving mixed reef.