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AquaFrenzy

Corals · LPS coral

Frogspawn Coral

Fimbriaphyllia divisa (Veron & Pichon, 1980)

Also called Frogspawn, Wall frogspawn, Branching frogspawn, Octopus coral, Grape coral, Honey coral, Wall coral

  • CareModerate
  • Reef safeWith caution
  • TemperamentAggressiveSweeper tentacles sting nearby corals
  • Favorite foods
    1. Light (zooxanthellae)
    2. Mysis / meaty foods
    3. Micro-plankton / brine shrimp
  • Max size10 in (25.4 cm)
  • Min tank55 gal
  • LifespanNo fixed lifespan
  • IUCN statusLeast Concern
Frogspawn Coral (Fimbriaphyllia divisa)
Species photo: Gdiggers, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Quick answers

How big does the Frogspawn Coral get?
Up to 10 in (25.4 cm).
What size tank does it need?
At least 55 gallons.
How hard is it to keep?
Care level: Moderate.
Is it reef safe?
With caution. Safe with fish and other invertebrates, but it stings corals.
What does it eat?
  • Light (zooxanthellae)
  • Mysis / meaty foods
  • Micro-plankton / brine shrimp
How long does it live?
No fixed lifespan: colonies grow by budding and can persist for many years in a stable aquarium.
What are good tankmates?
  • Hammers and other frogspawn (often kept close; see the disease note)
  • Clownfish (may host in it)
  • Peaceful reef fish that leave LPS alone
  • Reef-safe snails and hermit crabs

The 30-second version

Frogspawn coral looks like a clump of frog eggs, or a bunch of tiny grapes, waving in the water. Each soft tentacle splits at the end into lots of little round tips. The tips are often pink, green or cream. Under the soft parts, the coral builds a hard skeleton shaped like a wavy wall. Tiny living things called algae live inside the coral and make food from light. The coral also grabs bits of food that float by. Its tentacles stay out day and night, so it always looks fluffy. But watch out! At night it can stretch out long stinging tentacles, up to about six inches, to push other corals away. So it needs its own space in the tank. In the wild it lives on reefs from Japan down to Australia, often in shallow, cloudy water.

Water & care

LiveAquaria rates it Moderate, and Tidal Gardens calls it somewhat finicky, with care 'very similar' to torch and hammer corals: it needs the same stability, spacing and pest vigilance. Branching frogspawn is easier to place and frag than wall frogspawn. Its zooxanthellae provide most of its food, so steady light and chemistry matter more than heavy feeding.

ParameterKeep it at
Temperature 75–78 °F
Salinity (SG) 1.024–1.026
pH 8.1–8.4
Alkalinity 8–12 dKH
Calcium 400–450 ppm
Magnesium 1,300–1,450 ppm
Nitrate 5–15 ppm
Phosphate 0.03–0.1 ppm

LiveAquaria lists 72-78°F, pH 8.1-8.4, dKH 8-12 and SG 1.022-1.025; modern reef practice runs slightly saltier (natural seawater is about 1.026). Tidal Gardens notes that 5-10 ppm nitrate suits Euphyllia while 30-40 ppm can cause recession. Calcium, magnesium and phosphate ranges follow the Reef Builders Euphyllia guidance and general LPS practice; stability matters more than exact numbers.

Feeding

DietPhotosynthetic

Favorite foods

  • Microplankton
  • Brine shrimp
  • Mysis shrimp
  • Small pellet foods (fine hatchery-style pellets)

Its zooxanthellae supply most of its nutrition, but occasional feeding with microplankton, brine shrimp or very small meaty foods helps. Euphyllia are not aggressive feeders, so use fine particles, turn the pumps down, and offer small amounts once a week or so. Avoid heavy broadcast feeding.

Tank & maintenance

Minimum tank
55 gallons
Aquascape
Middle or lower rockwork (LiveAquaria suggests middle to top), on a secure base with about 6 in (15 cm) of clear space all round. Wall colonies need flat rock or the sand bed to spread; branching colonies suit ledges and frag racks. No species-specific minimum tank size is published.
Lighting
Moderate: roughly 50-150 PAR (Tidal Gardens' 'medium' band), with LiveAquaria suggesting moderate to fairly strong light. Acclimate gradually and judge by tentacle extension and color.
Water flow
Moderate, random flow that keeps the tentacles swaying without folding them back; Tidal Gardens suggests moderate to strong, LiveAquaria medium.

Routine upkeep

Inspect weekly for receding tissue, brown slime or flatworms; keep up routine water changes and steady dosing of alkalinity, calcium and magnesium; feed lightly and occasionally; and trim or move neighbors as the colony spreads.

Temperament & tankmates

TemperamentAggressive

Long night-time sweeper tentacles with stinging cells will damage most unrelated corals in reach. Hobby reports on contact with other Euphyllia vary; many keepers grow frogspawn next to hammers, but brown jelly disease spreads readily between these corals, so a little space is safer.

Reef safeWith caution

Safe with fish and other invertebrates, but it stings corals. Sweeper tentacles can reach about 6 in (15 cm) from the base at night, so keep that much clear space around it. Clownfish sometimes host in frogspawn.

Good tankmates

  • Hammers and other frogspawn (often kept close; see the disease note)
  • Clownfish (may host in it)
  • Peaceful reef fish that leave LPS alone
  • Reef-safe snails and hermit crabs

Avoid

  • Unrelated corals within about 6 in
  • Angelfish, butterflyfish and other fish that pick at LPS
  • Unquarantined Euphyllia that may carry flatworms or brown jelly
  • Strong direct flow that folds the tentacles back

Help it thrive

  • Quarantine and dip new frogspawn before it goes near your other Euphyllia.
  • Give it a 6 inch 'moat' and check where the sweepers reach after lights out.
  • Keep alkalinity steady; swings are a common trigger for recession and brown jelly.
  • Use random flow that makes the tentacles sway rather than lie flat.
  • Pick branching frogspawn if you plan to frag; wall colonies are slower and harder to cut.

Common ailments

Brown jelly disease
Signs
A brown, jelly-like mass over part of the colony with fast tissue loss, spreading to neighboring heads and other Euphyllia within days.
Prevention
Stable parameters, good random flow, no tissue damage, quarantine of new corals, and space between Euphyllia colonies.
Treatment
Siphon off the jelly, cut away or remove the affected part immediately, dip the rest in an antibacterial or iodine coral dip, and do a water change.

Euphyllia-eating flatworms
Signs
Poor extension, bite-like spots in the tissue, small pale flatworms on the coral or glass, and egg clusters on the skeleton.
Prevention
Quarantine and dip new Euphyllia and inspect the skeleton for eggs.
Treatment
Repeat coral dips about weekly for 6-8 weeks and remove egg clusters from the skeleton, since eggs survive dips.

Tissue recession and polyp bailout
Signs
Tissue pulling back into the valleys to expose skeleton, shrunken tentacles, or polyps detaching from the skeleton under poor conditions.
Prevention
Stable chemistry, nitrate well below 30 ppm, suitable light and flow, and no stinging neighbors.
Treatment
Correct the cause and, on branching colonies, frag healthy heads away from receding ones. Bailed-out polyps rarely survive.

Bleaching
Signs
Pale or translucent tissue after a lighting change or temperature spike.
Prevention
Acclimate gradually and keep temperature stable.
Treatment
Reduce light, stabilize temperature, and feed lightly while the coral recovers.

This is general hobby guidance, not veterinary advice. Quarantine new arrivals and treat in a separate tank whenever you can.

Risks of owning one

  • Its sticky tentacles can irritate skin; wear gloves when handling.
  • Sweeper tentacles reaching about 6 inches can kill neighboring corals.
  • Brown jelly disease can destroy a colony quickly and spread to other Euphyllia.
  • Flatworms and other hitchhikers can arrive on new colonies.
  • Shops often sell the branching F. paradivisa as frogspawn, so growth form and care may differ from what you expect.

Propagation & fragging

DifficultyModerate AquaculturedWidely available

Fragmentation. Branching colonies (usually F. paradivisa) are easy to split by cutting heads off at the stalk. True wall frogspawn must be sawn through the skeleton between valleys and heals more slowly. Colonies also bud new heads, and polyp bailout is a rare stress response. Sexual spawning rarely succeeds in home tanks.

  1. Use clean tools, gloves and eye protection.
  2. On branching colonies cut a head off at its stalk; on wall colonies saw through the thinnest skeleton between valleys.
  3. Dip the frag in an iodine-based coral dip.
  4. Glue the bare skeleton to a plug or rock.
  5. Place in moderate random flow and moderate light, away from other corals.
  6. Watch cut areas closely for brown jelly for two weeks.

Deep dive The science, history and family tree

The science

Fimbriaphyllia divisa is a colonial, zooxanthellate large-polyp stony coral in the family Euphylliidae. Its skeleton is flabello-meandroid: long, thin-walled valleys that curve and branch to form a wall-like colony, which can exceed 1 m across. Polyps are extended day and night and carry tubular tentacles that divide into many short branches, each ending in a rounded knob, which gives the cluster-of-eggs or bunch-of-grapes look. Tips are usually paler than the stems (cream, pink, green or purple) over green, brown or tan tissue. At night, sweeper tentacles can extend about 15 cm beyond the colony. The species occurs in the Indo-West Pacific from southern Japan, the Ryukyu Islands and the East China Sea through Southeast Asia to Australia, and east to Papua New Guinea, Palau, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, at 0-40 m. Large colonies are usually found in shallow, turbid environments and are commonly attached to vertical surfaces; high bleaching levels have been recorded in Palau. Like other Fimbriaphyllia it is mainly gonochoric (colonies spawn as male or female) and broadcast-spawns, and its larvae develop into planktonic planulae before settling. Described by Veron and Pichon (1980) as Euphyllia (Fimbriaphyllia) divisa, it was moved to Fimbriaphyllia after Luzon et al. (2017) showed that the hammer and frogspawn group forms a lineage separate from the torch coral. Aquarium 'branching frogspawn' is usually the phaceloid F. paradivisa, which grows as separate corallites on branching stalks. F. divisa is assessed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (2023) and listed on CITES Appendix II.

Appearance
Branched tentacles ending in clusters of small rounded tips (often pink, green, cream or purple) extended day and night over a curving, wall-shaped skeleton. Colony tissue is green, brown or tan. Look-alikes: branching frogspawn (F. paradivisa) has the same tentacles on separate heads with branching stalks; hammer coral (F. ancora) has unbranched tentacles with anchor-shaped tips; torch coral (Euphyllia glabrescens) has long single-tipped tentacles; F. yaeyamaensis also has branched tips; bubble or grape coral (Plerogyra) has smooth bubble-like vesicles rather than branched tentacles.
Native range
Indo-West Pacific: southern Japan, the Ryukyu Islands and the East China Sea, south through Southeast Asia (including Indonesia) to Australia, and east to Papua New Guinea, Palau, the Solomon Islands and Fiji. Trade specimens come mainly from Indonesia, Australia, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and Tonga.
Habitat
Reef-associated at 0-40 m. Large colonies typically grow in shallow, turbid water and are often attached to vertical surfaces.
Size
10 in (25.4 cm). Colonies can exceed 1 m (39 in) across; no reliable maximum is published. The tentacle clusters make the coral look much larger than its skeleton, and sweepers reach about 6 in (15 cm) at night.
Lifespan
No fixed lifespan: colonies grow by budding and can persist for many years in a stable aquarium. Stressed colonies may lose heads through polyp bailout while the rest survives.
Conservation
Least Concern. Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessed 27 October 2023), though reef corals as a group are increasingly threatened by bleaching (the 2024 IUCN reassessment found 44% of reef-building corals threatened). CITES Appendix II. Frogspawn was not among the Euphyllia named in the EU's 2020 review of Australian imports or in Queensland's 2022 species-level harvest limits, but wild colonies still need CITES export permits. Aquacultured frogspawn is widely available

In the aquarium vs in the wild

In your aquarium

A classic reef display coral and frequent clownfish host, kept for its fluffy, egg-cluster tentacles; branching forms are common in frag swaps.

On the reef

A reef-building coral of shallow, often turbid reefs and vertical surfaces, adding structure, capturing plankton, and defending space with sweeper tentacles.

History

Described by J.E.N. Veron and M. Pichon in 1980 as Euphyllia (Fimbriaphyllia) divisa in their Australian Institute of Marine Science monograph on eastern Australian corals; divisa means 'divided', for its branched tentacles. A staple of reef aquariums under names such as frogspawn, octopus, grape and honey coral, it has been harvested for the trade from Indonesia, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and the Great Barrier Reef, and is now widely aquacultured. It was moved to the genus Fimbriaphyllia after the 2017 molecular study by Luzon and colleagues. Much hobby 'frogspawn' sold as branching heads is actually F. paradivisa, described by Veron in 1990.

Evolution & relatives

Frogspawn belongs to Fimbriaphyllia with the hammers (F. ancora, F. paraancora), branching frogspawn (F. paradivisa) and F. yaeyamaensis. Luzon et al. (2017) found this group forms one clade defined by short polyps with anchor-shaped or branched tips, mainly separate sexes and broadcast spawning, separate from the long-tentacled, brooding torch coral (Euphyllia glabrescens). Wall versus branching growth does not separate the species, and the authors suggest the genus may be young, with possible gene flow between species. The family Euphylliidae sits on the 'complex' branch of stony corals (suborder Refertina) and is grouped with Galaxea in DNA studies; the similar-looking bubble coral evolved its fleshy polyps independently on the 'robust' branch.

Family tree, from kingdom down

  1. Kingdom Animalia Animals Animals are living things made of many cells that must eat food to live. Fish, corals, crabs, snails and sea stars are all animals.
  2. Phylum Cnidaria Cnidarians Cnidarians are soft animals with tentacles. The tentacles have tiny stinging cells. Corals, sea anemones and jellyfish all belong here.
  3. Subphylum Anthozoa Corals and sea anemones These cnidarians spend their whole lives as polyps: a tube with a mouth ringed by tentacles. Unlike jellyfish, they never swim around as a bell-shaped medusa.
  4. Class Hexacorallia Hexacorals In this group the tentacles and body parts come in sixes or multiples of six. It includes stony corals, sea anemones, mushroom corals and zoanthids.
  5. Order Scleractinia Stony corals Stony corals build hard skeletons out of limestone under their soft polyps. Over many years, these skeletons pile up and make coral reefs.
  6. Suborder Refertina Complex corals
  7. Family Euphylliidae Euphylliid corals These stony corals have long, fleshy polyps that stay out during the day. They include torch, hammer and frogspawn corals.
  8. Genus Fimbriaphyllia Hammer and frogspawn corals These corals have fleshy tentacles shaped like hammers, anchors or bunches of eggs. Scientists split them from Euphyllia using DNA.
  9. Species Fimbriaphyllia divisa

See it on the Tree of Life Compare with another species

Closest relatives

  • Fimbriaphyllia paradivisa Branching frogspawn Same genus; the branching form often sold as frogspawn Read guide · Compare
  • Fimbriaphyllia ancora Hammer coral Same genus Read guide · Compare
  • Fimbriaphyllia paraancora Branching hammer coral Same genus
  • Fimbriaphyllia yaeyamaensis Same genus; also has branched tentacle tips
  • Euphyllia glabrescens Torch coral Same family; sister genus Read guide · Compare
  • Galaxea fascicularis Galaxy coral Same family per WoRMS

Older scientific names: Euphyllia divisa, Euphyllia (Fimbriaphyllia) divisa.

Fun facts

  1. Its name comes from the Latin for 'divided', after the forked tentacles.
  2. The polyps stay extended day and night, unlike many corals that hide during the day.
  3. Frogspawn is mainly gonochoric: in a spawning season each colony releases either eggs or sperm. Its close relative the hammer coral was found in 2024 to switch sex from year to year.
  4. Big wild colonies often hang on vertical surfaces in murky, shallow water.
  5. Much of what shops sell as 'branching frogspawn' is actually a different species, F. paradivisa.

Learn more

Sources

  1. WoRMS: Fimbriaphyllia divisa (Veron & Pichon, 1980) marinespecies.org
  2. SeaLifeBase: Fimbriaphyllia divisa sealifebase.se
  3. Wikipedia: Fimbriaphyllia divisa en.wikipedia.org
  4. Luzon et al. 2017, Resurrecting a subgenus to genus (PeerJ) pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
  5. LiveAquaria: Frogspawn Coral liveaquaria.com
  6. Tidal Gardens: Frogspawn coral care tidalgardens.com
  7. Tidal Gardens: Hammer coral care (Euphyllia nitrate guidance) tidalgardens.com
  8. Reef Builders (2026): Torch coral care guide (Euphyllia chemistry and problems) reefbuilders.com
  9. Reef Builders (2020): Watch out for a new, more damaging Euphyllia flatworm reefbuilders.com
  10. Reef Builders (2021): Revised Queensland coral exports approved until 2024 reefbuilders.com
  11. IUCN (2024): Over 40% of coral species face extinction iucn.org

Care facts

The care facts on this guide and its product pages (care level, reef safety, temperament, size, tank, diet, flow, purpose, foods, acclimation and origin) combine 14 independent sources, checked October 25, 2026.

  1. Frogspawn Coral LiveAquaria
  2. Frogspawn Coral Aquariadise (Alison Page)
  3. Frogspawn Coral Fish Tank Advisor
  4. Frogspawn Coral Build Your Aquarium
  5. Frogspawn Coral 101: Care, Placement & Feeding Tips Aquarium Source (Alison Yang)
  6. Frogspawn Coral Care: Lighting, Flow, Placement & Feeding Queen City Corals
  7. Frogspawn Coral: Should You Add a Frag to Your Tank? Saltwater Aquarium Blog
  8. Frogspawn Coral Care Guide Reef Chasers
  9. How to care for the Frogspawn Coral in your reef tank Aquarium Store Depot
  10. Complete Frogspawn Coral Care Guide ReefBay
  11. Frogspawn Coral (Euphyllia Divisa): Ultimate Care Guide Fish Laboratory
  12. Frogspawn Coral Care Tidal Gardens (Than Thein)
  13. Green Tip Frogspawn Coral Care Guide Top Shelf Aquatics
  14. Frogspawn Coral Care Guide: Lighting, Flow, Placement & Feeding Queen City Corals

Scientific names and classification follow the World Register of Marine Species (AphiaID 1048074). Last updated October 25, 2026.