Bird's Nest Coral

Bird's Nest Coral is the genus benchmark — hystrix builds the classic dense, randomly branching nest structure in vivid pink or cream that defines the look, and in a mature tank it becomes a focal colony that fills an entire zone of the aquascape. Top placement, high light, and strong turbulent flow; hystrix is less forgiving than pistillata and needs reliable high-energy conditions to maintain branch tip coloration. Tissue necrosis spreads fast through the dense branch matrix — if you see any RTN starting, frag aggressively ahead of it immediately because hystrix doesn't give you time to wait and watch. Blow detritus out of the colony weekly with a baster, feed fine particulate foods twice a week, and keep a healthy frag of it somewhere in the system as insurance — it's worth the redundancy.