On the Coral Spotlight blog posts I'm going to pick a few corals that are in store and online. Some will be new arrivals and some are just nice pieces that I like or think deserve a bit of the limelight for a minute. Either way, here's a few corals for this month that I think are worth a look at, just click the coral name and it will take you to the RockNCritters online listing, enjoy!
This month it's all about Acropora. Since the Indonesia export ban was lifted in 2020 we've seen the return of Indo corals into the market and whilst this is certainly not exclusively SPS, Indo is well known for the Acropora it ships out. Rainbow Tenuis, Milleporas and deep water Acros are all mainstays of the Indonesian export shipments. When corals are imported from the wild there are two main types, wild caught and maricultured. Wild caught as the name suggests, are corals that are collected from the reef in the wild. Maricultured however is coral that has been grown in dedicated farming areas in the sea. These farming areas are often just off shore and take the form of large metal frames with corals attached to grow out. During the two year Indo ban all of these maricultured corals in the farming areas continued to grow so when the ban was lifted we saw a lot of large colonies coming through the system. Now that initial lot has been processed and exported however, we are beginning to see smaller colonies more akin to what we saw prior to the Indo ban in 2018.
Now that the ban has been lifted though and with exports from Australia still coming through (despite Brexit and Covid throwing spanners in the works) the coral tables are filling up fast. There's a great selection of SPS, LPS and Soft corals in store right now, I think it's fair to say space is at a premium at times! But this month's spotlight is all about Acropora so I've picked a handful of Acropora that's looking pretty nice right now in store.
Now it wouldn't be a Coral Spotlight blog post if I didn't wax lyrical about a coral I liked in particular so here's my Acropora favourite.
On the website it's simply listed as an Acropra Colony but I describe/label it as a Pastel-esque Acropora.
Like a lot of named acropora variants the base colour seems to be a light green whilst the coralites have a light pink hue. The axial coralite is then a light purple/blue which tips each branch nicely. The really nice thing about this Acropora though is how the colours aren't extremely bold and in your face, which is why I describe it as a pastel-esque Acro. It looks as if someone has coloured it in with pastels. It's one of those corals that you look at and then keep looking at as it draws you in, it takes a moment to appreciate and ID the changing colours over the branches and coralites. For me, that's something I really like.
SPS Corals and in particular Acropora are regarded as difficult to keep or rather, need a bit more care and attention than other more forgiving corals. That being said, they are far from impossible to keep. Care-wise they need good lighting, flow and water parameters all need to be managed and kept in check. Watch this space for a more in depth look at SPS and Acropora care requirements but to start, here's a link to another of the blog posts that discusses Parameters.
PARAMETERS 101 CLICK HERE
If you want to see the Acropora from this Blog post on the website then click the link below and it'll take you straight to the SPS Livestock section on the site. Enjoy!
SPS CORALS FOR SALE HERE