[3] The World Register of Marine Species includes the following genera in the family:[1] Mussids are hermatypic or reef-building corals and can be either solitary or colonial.

The polyps are large and fleshy, and in certain species, the body cavity becomes inflated with water during the day, partially revealing the underlying skeleton.

All species are zooxanthellate, that is, they contain symbiotic, single-celled photosynthetic dinoflagellates that live in the tissues and provide the coral with nutrients produced by photosynthesis during the day.

[4] Budding in mussids is always intracalicular, that is to say occurring inside the oral disc of the polyp, within the whorl of tentacles.

The resulting corallites that merge form the meandering valleys between costate septa typical of brain corals.