biggles
Premium Member
I hope you come across a similar piece too mate
Every echi i see is a classic icefire variant. Blue and white skin to varying degrees. They all have the same reddish brown hue on the branch skin with blue tips. Sometimes they actually look pure white and blue which is just bad bleaching so don't be fooled into thinking you scored a crazy stunner that will be easy to hold crisp colors on. The reddy brown hues normally accompanying the blue highlights are zoa and the blue is pigment. Zoa always get blown off before the pigments fade when fresh collected stuff is really stressed. Look at how bleached the pink branch was when i first brought it home.
In my experience it is easier to color up a piece with brown hues still present than it is to nurse a much more bleached but amazing looking pastel stunner.
Trap for young players.... and don't ever be put off buying a tanned skinned pale echi piece as long as you can still see some blue hints at the tips it will color up fast so grab it if it's a good price. I always put them in medium light, the light a SSC would like. If everyihng else in the tank is relatively happy and you have no PE after days it's the flow. They look twiggy and delicate because they came from a gentle flow area of the reef. The growth on wild stuff will give you a good pointer as to where it came from under the water.
This echi had hints of teal green on the skin instead of any brown type hue which i haven't ever come across before, pale blue tips and white polyps instead of the usual pale brown ones the wild ech's i see have normally. If Matt could photograph it for me you would see the beautiful yellowish hues and detail on the branch skin. The polyps are coloring up in a cool way after 5 months doing diddly squat but it's not growing yet. It receives very, very gentle flow as the tips are only about 1/16" and i want to try and hold the super delicate growth if possible.
