Could this be a dendro and not a tubastraea?

[Aquabucket]

Could this be a type of dendro and not a tubastraea as labled by my wholesaler. It would not be the first time they got a name wrong.

The stalks I fragged are starting to branch out just like I've seen with pics of dendrophyllia arbuscula and others. They never had the common solid base that I see with tubastrea corals. When I first got these they consisted of several stalks anchored to a rock at various points. I know these pics are not the best but this is all I have right now:

Open polyps shown when I first got them:
http://reefcentral.com/gallery/data/518/32290SunCoral01.jpg

Closed showing new buds after placing them in a new location:
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/627/sept0619wb2.jpg

They don't look like any of the tubastreas I have seen and are more of a branching type coral as opposed to the more colonial tubastreas. As you can see there are some new polyps sprouting up on the rocks and some stalks are forming new branches with polyps. I spot feed each head almost every day with mysis.

Here are some pics of dendros I found on the web that strongly resemble what my coral looked like before carefully chiseling the stalks off the rock they came on ~ the first 2 pics looks almost exactly the same as the original piece I received including some of the colorful growths along the rock seen in the second picture:

http://perso.orange.fr/sulawesi.biologie.sous-marine/DENDROPHYLLIINA/images/previews/preview3.jpg

http://subaqua.web.cern.ch/subaqua/Photos/2003-12-20-Maldives-JC/Maldives%20web-Images/27.jpg

*I also posted this in the LPS forum

[Aquabucket]

Nevermind. Based on the size of the polyps I've determined it may be Cladopsammia gracilis. The largest polyp when opened is about the size of a nickel. I have just read that dendros get much larger in size.

Cladopsammia gracilis:

http://i33.photobucket.com/albums/d56/joanxavier/dendro-rosa-sep-06.jpg

Hopefully someone can help me get a positive ID.

[skeeter-doc]

hey lunch, what family do they beling to? I never heard of that genus before, ...

[Aquabucket]

I have a bucket but its not for lunch :D

I can see how you mixed me up with the renowned Lunchbucket though!

I am still researching the Dendrophylliidae family tree. A hot coral of the times in the LPS world are the large polyped Dendrophyllia.sp. The types sought after these days (commonly named dendros) have polyps much larger than those found on Tubastrea (common Sun coral) with each polyp expanding to an inch or two in Dia or more.
These corals can set you back $50 - $100 or more per polyp and are not as fast growers as the more common Tubastrea. Tubastrea is a member of the Dendrophylliidae family.

The coral I acquired came from Viet Nam and appears a bit different than many of the more common Tubastrea (sun) corals I have seen. Some of the polyps are growing a bit larger than I expected and they can feed like crazy. Because of these developments I began to question whether I had a Tubastrea or not.

So far It looks as though I may have a Cladopsammia gracilis which is also a member of the Dendrophylliidae family. Not all Dendrophyllia.sp have the large polyps collectors are searching for and I think its quite possible that I may have something other than a Tubastrea.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge can set me straight.

[skeeter-doc]

so sorry Aqua, my mistake, typing faster than my eyes I guess, ...