What is important with any of these types of corals is to try out what kind of lighting it does best under. Lighting is indeed a differentiating factor.
One of the frequently found Alcyonium corals is often called Dead Man's Hand, or similar names. These corals are actually Leather corals. They are frequently found in waters that are somewhat colder than what reef tanks are kept at. Note, however, that since hobbyists keep tanks anywhere between 75 and 80 depending on their likes, these corals can do quite well in reefs. Because of the many varieties though, we cannot generalize this. Several Alcyonium types do quite well in tropical temperature aquariums, running closer to 80 degrees, and all require the same general water quality parameters as other Leather corals do.
Yellow Tonga Leather CoralSome require rather high amounts of light and others prefer shady locations, others again prefer medium type amounts of light. If you own any of these types of Leather corals, and your impression is that they are not doing well and not growing, lighting is probably the main cause. The secondary factor to look at is food availability (see below).
The recommendation, then, would be to try out various lighting conditions and see how the coral behaves. You will soon be able to determine which ones it seems to prefer, whether high, medium or low. Do not assume that all this branched leathers that come in many color variations require metal halides or large amounts of VHO tubes. Some may indeed not.
Water quality wise there are no real differences from other corals. Stability and generally recommended pH and s.g. levels are the key. No rapid changes of any parameters as doing so will affect them.
It has also been reported that it is best not to take these corals out of the water at all. Contact with air seems to affect them. The exact reasons for this are not quite known.
Because some Alcyonium corals do not harbor Zooxanthellae, they need to be fed with plankton and you need to make sure that your tank is not mechanically filtered as this removes nutrient sources. Make sure that plenty of food particles are floating around in the water for them to trap. They feed, in small amounts, all the time.
Having kept a Dead Man's Hand and at least doubled it in size, in a 10 gallon tank with hardly any other corals in it, I did notice that this coral did real well when zooplankton was added once a week and when iodine was kept at about 0.8 ppm.
What I noticed also is that this type of coral is sensitive to the presence of shrimp in the tank and reacts negatively when anything crawls over them. Whether this was an isolated incident or not is open for debate but I each time a shrimp would be in the aquarium, the coral would not do as well and would not expand. When the shrimp or other offending animal was removed it would reopen as before. I tried this several times each time with the same results.
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