WYSIWYG Ultra War Paint Scolymia (3″) – Conditioned in Key West

WYSIWYG Ultra War Paint Scolymia (3″) – Conditioned in Key West is a fleshy large-polyp brain coral whose inflated tissue and color are best supported by stable reef conditions, modest light, and gentle indirect water movement.

Care and Placement

Fleshy large-polyp brain corals respond best to stable reef conditions. Give the coral a flat, secure position where the tissue can expand without rubbing against sharp rock or being pressed against the skeleton by direct flow. Acclimate gradually to the stated light range.

Lighting	Low to Medium — PAR 50–150. Diffused light supports fluorescence without bleaching the tissue.
Flow	Low to Moderate — indirect and gentle. Cut flow while target feeding.
Placement	Sandbed or a flat spot on lower rockwork where the polyp can fully inflate.
Aggression	Semi-aggressive — allow 3–4 inches of clear space from neighbors.
Feeding	Primarily photosynthetic; offer small portions of appropriately sized meaty food after feeder tentacles extend
Care level	Intermediate
Water Parameters	Salinity 1.025–1.026 · Temperature 76–78°F · Alkalinity 8–9 dKH · Calcium 420–440 ppm · Magnesium 1300–1400 ppm

Keeping the Tissue Healthy

Keep detritus from settling in folds and valleys, but avoid a direct powerhead stream. The coral may inflate beyond the visible skeleton, so allow room for daily expansion and nighttime feeding behavior. Handle the skeleton rather than the living tissue whenever possible.

Consistency matters more than chasing a single number. Make lighting and flow changes gradually, keep alkalinity and salinity steady, and watch tissue inflation as the clearest day-to-day placement signal.

What to expect when it arrives

A single-polyp brain arrives deflated and may look like a bare skeleton with a skin over it. Float the sealed bag 15 minutes, drip acclimate over a full hour, and place it flat on the sand bed in low light and low flow. Full inflation can take several days — these are among the slower corals to recover from shipping and the wait is normal.

Placement, and why it belongs on sand

Put it on the sand bed, not on rock. The underside is rounded and needs to seat in soft substrate; on rock the tissue rests against hard edges and abrades. Keep it where nothing can fall on it and where snails and hermits do not habitually travel, because a single-polyp coral has no spare tissue — damage anywhere is damage to the whole animal.

Light should be low, 40 to 100 PAR. These are deepwater animals and they bleach quickly under anything brighter. Flow should be gentle enough that the polyp is not rocking.

Feeding and growth

Feed directly after lights out with a small meaty food. A regularly fed scoly thickens noticeably across a few months, and that thickening is what you are buying — these corals grow in depth and color saturation rather than spreading. Do not expect a scoly to get visibly wider.

Common trouble

A tear in the tissue is almost always mechanical: a snail, a hermit, or something dropped. Deflation during the day usually means light is too strong. Both are placement problems with placement solutions.