Purple Nana

SPS Deep Dive – Purple Nana

There are a lot of SPS corals out there today with fancy names and eye catching pictures that cost a lot of coin and generate some serious buzz among reef keepers.  And then there are some corals that don’t get this type of love but really deserve it since they just look awesome in a captive reef. I would put the Purple Nana in this category. The Purple Nana has thin, long and straight branches with a dark green base, purple tips and white polyps. It does resemble an Acropora valida but the Purple Nana has thinner branches.

purple nana sps

This relatively easy to keep SPS coral requires medium to high lighting and will do fine under T5s, metal halides and LEDs. Moderate to strong circulation is recommended for optimal growth. As for placement, I have seen this coral do really well in the middle as well as the top part of a tank. Perhaps the most intense purple coloration I witnessed was in a T5 tank in which the coral was sitting at the very top of the reef right under the lights. I mean this thing was Barney purple!

There are a few strains out there including one from ORA that was released to the public for sale in April of 2003. It apparently was acquired from the home aquarium of an ORA employee and almost didn’t make it due to some hurricanes hitting the ORA farm in 2004. As I mentioned, the Purple Nana is not a designer coral by today’s standards but I do gravitate to it when I see it in person. There was a quote in the movie Boogie Nights that you should “wear what you dig” (it referenced a guy who liked to wear cowboy cloths). I certainly dig the Purple Nana and it will continue to get my love!

 

Additional Resources

If you would like some help with a new tank build, including help designing a custom aquarium, or help re-configuring your current setup then you can visit this page for more information. And if you are looking to add some equipment, I do sell GHL, Pax Bellum, Reef Octopus Calcium and Kalk Reactors and Royal Exclusiv products, including Dreamboxes, which is the equipment I use and recommend. I also sell Reef Brite metal halide and LED fixtures as well as Maxspect & IceCap Gyres.

As for additional insights and information, please explore my many other reef tank and SPS related articles as well as my YouTube channel. For an even deeper dive into reef tank care you can check out my Reef Keeping Master Class. This online course is an immersive and one of a kind educational tool designed to help reef aquarium hobbyists build and maintain a beautiful SPS reef tank. The course is a series of video presentations with some supplemental video from my YouTube channel. There are also quizzes to help students retain and understand the information presented in the course.

Need some frags…..I can help with that as well 🙂 Please visit my SPS Frag store to see what is available.

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