Pink Acropora Coral

Acropora is about as demanding as stony coral keeping gets, and that's worth saying plainly before the color sells you on it. This is small polyp stony coral (Acropora sp.) — the benchmark genus of the SPS world — and it wants strong stable lighting, vigorous turbulent flow, and calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium held tightly in range. The margins are narrower than LPS; a swing that a hammer or torch coral would shrug off can bleach or kill an Acropora that was looking perfect the day before.

The reward for getting it right is genuinely fast growth and branching skeletal architecture that no LPS or soft coral can replicate, plus color that intensifies under the right lighting spectrum rather than just surviving it. Pink Acropora under blue-heavy reef LED tends to shift toward violet or orange depending on the specific morphology — the coral's fluorescent proteins respond to different wavelengths in ways that make the exact color difficult to predict from a photo taken under different lighting.

This isn't a first coral. But it's an excellent next step once your system has proven itself stable over months, your alkalinity holds without fluctuating, and you've already kept some Montipora or Pocillopora successfully.

Scientific name: Acropora sp.
Origin: Indo-Pacific — high-energy outer reef crests and upper reef slopes with strong surge and high light penetration
Water parameters: Temp 76–82°F · Salinity 1.025–1.026 · pH 8.2–8.4 · Alkalinity 8–9.5 dKH · Calcium 400–450 ppm · Magnesium 1250–1350 ppm
Lighting: High — 200–400+ µmol PAR; upper third of tank placement
Flow: High, turbulent, multi-directional
Tank requirements: 50+ gal; mature established system with stable parameters
Diet: Primarily photosynthetic; stable trace element levels (strontium, iodine) matter more than target feeding
Husbandry note: Acropora shows stress through tissue recession starting at the base — check the bottom of the colony, not just the tips. Rapid tissue necrosis (RTN) can consume an Acropora in hours once started; catch it early and frag healthy tissue above the recession line immediately.