Several of them are "true Haitians", the ones with the whitish morphs came in quite a bit during 2007. I haven't seen any like that in awhile. Now the pinkish cream ones in the 9th picture 2nd post came in this past Spring. I think they come from a different depth because the creamy ones don't always hold their color once they are under high lighting. The really neon colored ones were truly that bright. Ultra fluorescing morphs are fairly uncommon but not truly rare. Maybe one in 25-50 polyps is super neon.
No, the bright pink ones are FL ricordia. I have never seen any true pinks from Haiti, only many variations of orange and gold. I have hardly ever seen blues from Haiti as well. Not to say they don't exist maybe my supplier just didn't get them in. Most all the Haitian ricordia I have seen is orange, gold, green, light pink, violet, and cream, with rainbow mixes of all of these colors. I have gotten in some Haitian rocks that appeared true yellow but under good light would change to gold.
True yellow florida ricordia nearly always has a light blue rim. They will remain yellow if they are actually yellow to begin with. I haven't seen any good bright turquoise rics in a long time now.
Well, all I know is that I buy for color. I would only buy rics under the name hatian with a copy of the import papers and I suggest everyone else do so so you don't get ripped off. Same goes for corals under the name Japanese. I always ask for the paper work and they say- oh well we have it but you cant see it. Riiiight...
Well Haitian ricordia look a lot different than florida ricordia, so if you study a lot of pictures you can tell the difference. (See Haitian ric vs. Florida ric thread). I've even had this discussion with more official people that tried to tell me my Haitian ricordia were illegally collected FL ricordia and they came around to my way of thinking. I have almost never seen an orange florida ricordia that had a green rim like "Haitian" ricordia and Haitian ricordia that have orange with violet rims are fairly uncommon as well. Most Florida ricordia also lack the rainbowyness (yes, lol) that Haitian ricordia have. Haitian ricordia tend to come on much harder rock than FL ricordia.
I personally like both. I don't see ultra fluorescing morphs with Haitian ricordia as often as i do with FL ricordia and I really like the screaming neon ricordia myself. ;]
And "Japanese" corals practically don't exist in our market.
Personally, I would prefer that all ricordia that are sold should be aquacultured as ricordia grow fast and can be force split easily. But there is very little incentive for that in our market since people are only looking for the cheapest ricordia they can find. I don't feel that its very ethically responsible to sell Haitian ricordia since Haiti doesn't have the best collection practices, but Haitian ricordia is a lot cheaper per polyp and its a tough economy to compete against people selling FL ricordia for so cheap. Nowadays everyone wants to pay $6-7 per polyp for ricordia. I've pretty much given up selling it as that's my wholesale price for it. I figure when ricordia is going for so little, it can't be good for the reefs.
In a perfect world the people that regulate coral collection would give incentives for aquacultured coral, but we're just not there yet.