Chalice Corals

What are chalice corals?

Chalice is a trade name rather than a single genus. It covers encrusting and plating large polyp stony corals from Echinophyllia, Mycedium, and Oxypora, all of which grow as thin sheets that spread across rock with raised mouths scattered over the surface. What collectors buy them for is the contrast between those mouths, the eyes, and the surrounding tissue, which in the best morphs runs to three or four distinct colors. They sit alongside acans and favia among the most collectible LPS corals.

Named chalice morphs worth knowing

Chalices are traded almost entirely by named lineage, and the names are stable enough to be meaningful:

• Hollywood Stunner — the benchmark chalice, with pink and green contrast and reliable, relatively quick encrusting growth. A good first chalice.
• Avatar and Space Invader types — blue-toned bodies with sharply contrasting eyes, prized for how strongly they read under actinic light.
• Rainbow and Raja Rampage morphs — multicolor lineages carrying three or more colors across one plate, and priced accordingly.
• Tyree blue and collector releases — long-established named lines from specific farms, generally slower growing but highly stable in color.

Chalice coral care: light, flow, and feeding

Chalices want less light than most people give them. Low to moderate intensity on the lower or middle rockwork, shaded from direct beams, produces better color than high light, which bleaches them. Flow should be gentle and indirect. Track alkalinity and calcium closely with dependable water testing equipment, and check your reef lighting coverage before placing a frag. Target feed small meaty foods once or twice a week after the feeding tentacles emerge in the evening.

Planning around chalice aggression

Chalice sweepers are the longest many reefers will encounter, reaching four to six inches after dark and stinging hard enough to kill an established neighbor over a few nights. Because the tentacles are retracted during the day, the damage often appears before the cause is identified. Watch the tank an hour after lights out to map the real footprint, leave at least six inches of clearance downstream, and give a chalice its own shelf rather than slotting it into a crowded aquascape.

Collecting chalices

Chalices reward a slow, deliberate approach: buy a frag of a named morph, give it a shaded shelf with room to plate outward, feed it, and leave it alone. Browse the full range of live corals for sale, compare other low-light collector LPS in acan corals, or look through established pieces in coral colonies.