---
title: Net Fire Coral (Millepora dichotoma)
scientific_name: Millepora dichotoma
common_name: Net Fire Coral
taxon: Hydrozoans
conservation_status: EN - Endangered
published: 2023-12-27T09:40:09.047Z
updated: 2026-08-14T11:57:50.740Z
tags: Net Fire Coral, Millepora dichotoma, Hydrozoans, Red Sea, Marine Life, Diving
url: https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hydrozoans/net-fire-coral
---

# Net Fire Coral (*Millepora dichotoma*)

## Quick facts

- **Group:** Hydrozoans (*Hydrozoa*)
- **Size:** colonies to 60 cm across
- **Depth:** 0-30 m
- **Diet:** Carnivore
- **Activity:** Diurnal
- **Rarity:** Common
- **Habitat:** Shallow reef edges and current-swept slopes
- **Reproduction:** Broadcast spawner, Budding
- **Hazard:** Dangerous, Venomous
- **CITES:** Appendix II
- **Conservation status:** EN - Endangered

## How to recognise it

- mustard to yellow-brown blades with white growing tips
- flat vertical plates joined into an open net
- surface smooth to the eye, with no visible polyps
- colonies to 60 cm across

Mustard-yellow blades with pale tips, standing in flat sheets across a current-swept edge, joined into an open net. It looks like a coral, it builds limestone like a coral, and it is not one. Fire corals are hydrozoans - closer relatives of jellyfish than of the corals they grow among.

The smooth surface is the giveaway that something is wrong. A stony coral shows its polyps; here they sit in pores too small to see, and the ones that sting are not the feeding polyps at all but separate defensive polyps loaded with nematocysts. They fire on contact and the thread goes straight through skin that a stony coral would not mark.

The sting arrives seconds late, burns for hours and often raises welts that come back itching for days. Rinse with seawater or vinegar, never with fresh water, which sets off the capsules still on the skin; lift anything clinging off with a card edge rather than rubbing; hot water at about 45 C (113 F) helps the pain. A large sting, or one on a face, is a matter for a doctor.

It is a jellyfish in its life cycle too. The colony releases tiny free-swimming medusae that spawn in open water, and the larvae settle to start new colonies - which is how fire coral turns up on a wreck that was clean a year ago.

## Also known as

- **English:** ramified fire coral, Fire Coral, reticulated fire coral, Net Fire Coral
- **French:** Corail de feu ramifié
- **Italian:** Corallo di fuoco ramificato
- **German:** Netz-Feuerkoralle
- **Czech:** žahavka rozvětvená
- **Chinese:** 兩叉千孔珊瑚
- **Russian:** Сетчатая миллепора

## Scientific synonyms

- *Millepora alcicornis f. dichotoma* (Forsskål, 1775)
- *Millepora cancellata* Ehrenberg, 1834
- *Millepora clavaria* Ehrenberg, 1834
- *Millepora reticularis* Milne Edwards, 1860

## Range

Republic of Mauritius, South Pacific Ocean

---

*Source: [Red Sea Creatures](https://redseacreatures.com/taxon/invertebrate/stinging/hydrozoans/net-fire-coral)*
*Updated: August 14, 2026*