Where did all these colors come from? And other thoughts from a returning reefer..

[Morpheosz]

A bit of a provocative question, but in all seriousness, I am a reefer returning after a 20 year hiatus and holy cow has the coral selection dramatically changed. I am curious where all these crazy color varieties have come from? 20 years ago, if you wanted zoa's, they were called "polyp rocks" and you could choose from brown or green, period. Now, there is clearly an endless variety of unreal colors in the zoa and paly space. Did they all come from selectively cultivating and propagating rare mutations found in the wild? Is this a situation similar to dogs being domesticated from wolves, just over a very short time horizon (15-20 years)?

In a related question, is there a good combined reference for all of these designer corals? One of the really big challenges I've had as a returning reefer, in so much as the explosion of designer named coral choices go, is understanding what the heck all these things are that are up for sale. It's really hard to google many of them because they often only result in lots of links to frags. It has been very hard to figure out what many of these frags grow up to be. I assume there is not or I would have stumbled on it in all my googling, but a hobbyist geared wiki where we could crowd source information and photos of full grown corals we are buying and selling would be a huge help to new, and probably not so new, hobbyists.

Lastly, in a related sort of "open letter" to all of the vendors running sales on here or selling frags online, if all you do is post close up pics of 1" frags, with abbreviated or slang names, with lots of acronyms that are never spelled out, and no information on what these things grow up to be, or what kind of care they need, you are likely missing out on a lot of business. If you cater only to advanced hobbyists that know what all these things mean, then people like me who are enthusiastically ready to spend money on your frags are likely going to sit on their wallet. This happened to me in the last big sale or two on here, I got particularly frustrated trying to decode acronyms and slang and googling everything on offer that I finally gave up. Every vendor should aspire to the type of information provided on sites like live aquaria or tidal gardens, as a couple of random examples off the top of my head. Also, if we newbies have to keep going to other vendors sites to learn about what you are selling, again, another missed opportunity because they'll deservedly get a lot of your business. There are a lot of new or returning hobbyists right now, like myself, and it would go a long way to grow your business to invest in the information you provide about what you are selling.

 

[GARRIGA]

I left in the 90s. Inverts were more interesting than corals. Come back in 2015 and amazed as well at all the new colors. Later find out some of it attributed to lighting the customer may or may not replicate along with parameters and nutrients. Last I want is brown things growing on my purple rocks and green isn’t a favorite color. Plus if I needed that I did build another freshwater planted tank.

I have the same issues not being able to visualize what a frag will develop into. Being a breeder of boa mutations I’m well versed in genetics but there the boa doesn’t change colors because of feed, lighting, how often you clean their cage or the flow of air surrounding them.

 

[Morpheosz]

Last I want is brown things growing on my purple rocks and green isn’t a favorite color. Plus if I needed that I did build another freshwater planted tank.

Totally agree, I'm definitely thrilled with the range of beautiful options available these days, just trying to make sense of it all

 

[TheDragonsReef]

It has alot to do with lighting. Back then metal halides and daylight lighting were most common. Now deep blues have taken over as majority in popularity since they can bring out the flourescence in corals. Those corals you see with crazy colors would still look brown or green under 10k lighting.

Heres a good example. These are my brightest zoas, under 10k lighting and under heavy blues

 

[Ghost25]

Agree that blue lighting has a lot to do with nicer zoa colors. Also reefing is more accessible today so more wild corals are collected so vendors can have the coolest new thing. The hobby has advanced considerably since the 90s. Corals are not being bred, except in some university research labs.

Without being rude, vendors are doing just fine without catering to absolute beginners. The only acronym you really need to know is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get).

 

[NoahLikesFish]

when someone figures out how to make 50000k lighting

 

[Big E]

I don't run heavy blue and there are numerous colorful zoas,Lps, Sps ect.

With Sps, stick to the corals you can google and have been around for quite some time with colony pictures from many actual reefers.

Ignore all the boutique type hyped corals

Be patient and do your research on prices............no need to rush into buying.

Right now the best sources for buying corals are other reefers who can ship or you can pick up locally.

The online vendor pricing is ridiculous even when they have sales. I would completely avoid them until you are very savvy about prices and the coral names.

There used to be a reference forum with all the named corals on R2R. Not sure what happened to it. I contributed a lot of pictures back then and it was very helpful to new people.

 

[GillMeister]

I had the same experience with SPS. I was able to get some little color out of my LPS using halides 15 years ago but they turned the SPS i tried a marvelous shade of dirt brown. I was using actinic PCs to get color and they weren't cutting it. The best halides had T5 supplemental lighting, which makes me wonder if the T5's were doing the heavy lifting.

Anyway, I got off point. Fast forward to today and I have some amazing coral colors with my LEDs. I think the lighting technology has just advanced to the point where you can dial I the light spectrum to maximize the potential of your SPS.

God help me, i know Alex is going to jump into this conversation because I mentioned halides but this is my experience and I stand by my opinion.

 

[mindme]

Beware: With some zoa/paly they will turn back to brown and green unless you run specific lighting settings. And I don't mean just the difference between whites and blues. And sadly, most places will often only show their coral in the dark blue lights, not what they look like under normal lighting. Because to coral sellers, colors = money.

There are some that do show the 10k pictures, much love to those guys.

Now you can run your lights that deep blue 24/7 if you want, and a good amount of people do. Personally I like a whiter light during the day so I can see my fish well and have their colors "pop". So I've had a few coral that simply mutate back to brown/green and even under the blue lights I run for the final 2 hours of the day stay that way. So that really cool looking online zoa ends up being a trash paly.

As for those names. Personally hate them. Also hate them in another hobby of mine. 100% marketing to get more money. Cool Awesome Name Zoa sells for more than Yellow zoa with green center. Sometimes it does make it easier for research though.

Another problem I have is with polyp size. They often times show smaller polyps and you think they are full grown size, but no they end up being palys that will grow over everything else. I'll never buy zoas/paly's online again unless I specifically know and recognize them etc.

When it comes to LPS like acans, be careful about those as well. I've noticed a few places like to take pictures and/or frag them when they are young. When they are young, they will often have an extra color or 2(green most often), but then when they grow out and get full size, the green will disappear. It'll be there on new growth only.

The same thing is common with sticks. They'll take pictures of the frags, which are all new growth. So you get these awesome colors. However, those colors only happen in the new growth and tips, so when it gets bigger you're just going to have that mostly single color stick. Looks awesome before and while growing out, but it's only going to be the tips that have that color, so beware. Also, you need good growth to get the colors, as if you don't have new growth, you won't have the colors. So if it's slower growing, you'll likely never see the colors.

For example, I have a "forest fire digitata", and I'll often see pictures of them like this. And the picture I bought mine with also looked like this, but with a little more purple.

But what it really looks like is just an orange digitata. Orange polyps with a slight green undertone. Tips get a little blue/purple...under blue lighting.

Tidal Gardens has more honest pictures, and includes 10k.

Forest Fire Montipora digitata

Not to say these things are not achievable because they 100% are. If you do it exactly the way they tell you to with your lighting etc. I would probably do it if my only goal were with the corals, but for me the fish are a big deal so it's a no for me. Beautiful tanks out there doing it though, I get the appeal.

And also not all coral change, only some do. Some maintain their colors and don't morph. It's just hard to know if what you are buying will or not. Unless as I mentioned above, you know for sure what it is you are buying. Some really nice legit ones out there.

Aside from the lighting, I think another factor that is giving better color and growth, even in whiter tanks is people better understand the chemistry of tanks and what is needed. Mostly when it comes to dosing trace elements and controlling phosphates/nitrates. I feel it would be impossible for water changes to ever keep up with trace element demand. People who do daily auto water changes probably come closest to it, but the math doesn't seem to work to me in terms of maintaining levels.

 

[JKBrown]

Nearly off-topic, but does anyone else feel like they have color overload? We all follow the coral dealers I am sure. For the first few months, I was liking everything they posted. Every picture outdid the next post until I was just numb. It reminds me of how mind-blowing designer guppies were 50 years ago. And then it seemed nothing could compete and we had jumped the shark. Discus started down that path for me too. Fortunately, when purposefully brought together in a tank, the ensemble can still be awe-inspiring.

 

[NaplesReefMom]

A bit of a provocative question, but in all seriousness, I am a reefer returning after a 20 year hiatus and holy cow has the coral selection dramatically changed. I am curious where all these crazy color varieties have come from? 20 years ago, if you wanted zoa's, they were called "polyp rocks" and you could choose from brown or green, period. Now, there is clearly an endless variety of unreal colors in the zoa and paly space. Did they all come from selectively cultivating and propagating rare mutations found in the wild? Is this a situation similar to dogs being domesticated from wolves, just over a very short time horizon (15-20 years)?

In a related question, is there a good combined reference for all of these designer corals? One of the really big challenges I've had as a returning reefer, in so much as the explosion of designer named coral choices go, is understanding what the heck all these things are that are up for sale. It's really hard to google many of them because they often only result in lots of links to frags. It has been very hard to figure out what many of these frags grow up to be. I assume there is not or I would have stumbled on it in all my googling, but a hobbyist geared wiki where we could crowd source information and photos of full grown corals we are buying and selling would be a huge help to new, and probably not so new, hobbyists.

Lastly, in a related sort of "open letter" to all of the vendors running sales on here or selling frags online, if all you do is post close up pics of 1" frags, with abbreviated or slang names, with lots of acronyms that are never spelled out, and no information on what these things grow up to be, or what kind of care they need, you are likely missing out on a lot of business. If you cater only to advanced hobbyists that know what all these things mean, then people like me who are enthusiastically ready to spend money on your frags are likely going to sit on their wallet. This happened to me in the last big sale or two on here, I got particularly frustrated trying to decode acronyms and slang and googling everything on offer that I finally gave up. Every vendor should aspire to the type of information provided on sites like live aquaria or tidal gardens, as a couple of random examples off the top of my head. Also, if we newbies have to keep going to other vendors sites to learn about what you are selling, again, another missed opportunity because they'll deservedly get a lot of your business. There are a lot of new or returning hobbyists right now, like myself, and it would go a long way to grow your business to invest in the information you provide about what you are selling.

I so agree!!!! I was at the Reefpalooza in Orlando. I went from booth to booth looking at coral to buy. At one booth, the vendor called a coral by a fancy name, but at another the coral looked exactly the same and that guy called it something else.
I too tried to google the names to see the differences, and online they all look the same.

 

[Tankkeepers]

A bit of a provocative question, but in all seriousness, I am a reefer returning after a 20 year hiatus and holy cow has the coral selection dramatically changed. I am curious where all these crazy color varieties have come from? 20 years ago, if you wanted zoa's, they were called "polyp rocks" and you could choose from brown or green, period. Now, there is clearly an endless variety of unreal colors in the zoa and paly space. Did they all come from selectively cultivating and propagating rare mutations found in the wild? Is this a situation similar to dogs being domesticated from wolves, just over a very short time horizon (15-20 years)?

In a related question, is there a good combined reference for all of these designer corals? One of the really big challenges I've had as a returning reefer, in so much as the explosion of designer named coral choices go, is understanding what the heck all these things are that are up for sale. It's really hard to google many of them because they often only result in lots of links to frags. It has been very hard to figure out what many of these frags grow up to be. I assume there is not or I would have stumbled on it in all my googling, but a hobbyist geared wiki where we could crowd source information and photos of full grown corals we are buying and selling would be a huge help to new, and probably not so new, hobbyists.

Lastly, in a related sort of "open letter" to all of the vendors running sales on here or selling frags online, if all you do is post close up pics of 1" frags, with abbreviated or slang names, with lots of acronyms that are never spelled out, and no information on what these things grow up to be, or what kind of care they need, you are likely missing out on a lot of business. If you cater only to advanced hobbyists that know what all these things mean, then people like me who are enthusiastically ready to spend money on your frags are likely going to sit on their wallet. This happened to me in the last big sale or two on here, I got particularly frustrated trying to decode acronyms and slang and googling everything on offer that I finally gave up. Every vendor should aspire to the type of information provided on sites like live aquaria or tidal gardens, as a couple of random examples off the top of my head. Also, if we newbies have to keep going to other vendors sites to learn about what you are selling, again, another missed opportunity because they'll deservedly get a lot of your business. There are a lot of new or returning hobbyists right now, like myself, and it would go a long way to grow your business to invest in the information you provide about what you are selling.

Some is lighting some is nutrients but really this is not why there are so many colors now avaliable

All these colors mostly are from a coral expelling it symbotic algae and taking on a new one that is better suited to the environment it live in

Aka most of the new colors have came from a bleaching event and then a florescent infection

In the last 2 years iv got a forestfire montipora that I bleached and it took on a purple from a difrent monti that bleached and died at the same time

And just last week I bleached every sps in the tank heat got high

The forestfire montipora has now taken on the hunter green from the tubs stella and iv got a green birdsnest turning orange from taking on the orange from a montipora capricornis

Lost the purple birdsnest completely and the purple monti cap

The others are the same color they have always been just a while lot lighter in color but they are getting alittle darker every day so fingers crossed they will make it I feed them alot so that helps alot