captbunzo
Premium Member
How many times do we hear "SUPER RARE blah blah blah CORAL" in this hobby? Well, I am the chief sceptic in this arena. For that reason, I am VERY EXCITED to have found something that I do believe actually IS a RARE coral, at least as far as availability in the hobby is concerned.
At my LFS down here that I've talked about quite a bit recently, I have stumbled across a coral that I have NEVER seen before. To me, it sort of looked like an Acropora with MONSTER polyps (say 1/4 inch across). Upon discussion with Michael, the local Reef Guru (who you can meet on Saturday at the COMAS meeting, see the COMAS meeting thread), the coral was identified as part of genus Archohelia, family Oculinidae.
For those that don't speak scientific mumbo jumbo, the family Oculinidae also contains the genus Galaxea.
So a few minutes ago I did some researching in my Aquarium Corals book and on the internet. VERY little info is available on this coral - as in count the useful results on one hand practically. A Reef Central search found NO results. In short, I was really amazed.
Now, Borneman's book helped me discover that the genus Archohelia has also have been known as Acrhelia. A search on that and more info in the book led me to discover that this genus has been merged into Galaxea, with the Acrhelia species now being known of as Galaxea acrhelia. VERY cool....
Here's a link:
http://whelk.aims.gov.au/coralsearch/html/701-800/Species pages/710.htm
And some pictures:
I am DEFINATELY going to have to pick up one of these. Actually, there are three of these colonies in the store. They look to be from the same parent colony. They are pretty decent size (softball-ish or so).
I would really love to see these entered into the COMAS donor program. It would be really cool to see a "rare in the hobby" coral like this become common in the Oklahoma City area. Maybe I will see if I can get Michael to donate the biggest one of those to the club for fragging.
At my LFS down here that I've talked about quite a bit recently, I have stumbled across a coral that I have NEVER seen before. To me, it sort of looked like an Acropora with MONSTER polyps (say 1/4 inch across). Upon discussion with Michael, the local Reef Guru (who you can meet on Saturday at the COMAS meeting, see the COMAS meeting thread), the coral was identified as part of genus Archohelia, family Oculinidae.
For those that don't speak scientific mumbo jumbo, the family Oculinidae also contains the genus Galaxea.
So a few minutes ago I did some researching in my Aquarium Corals book and on the internet. VERY little info is available on this coral - as in count the useful results on one hand practically. A Reef Central search found NO results. In short, I was really amazed.
Now, Borneman's book helped me discover that the genus Archohelia has also have been known as Acrhelia. A search on that and more info in the book led me to discover that this genus has been merged into Galaxea, with the Acrhelia species now being known of as Galaxea acrhelia. VERY cool....
Here's a link:
http://whelk.aims.gov.au/coralsearch/html/701-800/Species pages/710.htm
And some pictures:
I am DEFINATELY going to have to pick up one of these. Actually, there are three of these colonies in the store. They look to be from the same parent colony. They are pretty decent size (softball-ish or so).
I would really love to see these entered into the COMAS donor program. It would be really cool to see a "rare in the hobby" coral like this become common in the Oklahoma City area. Maybe I will see if I can get Michael to donate the biggest one of those to the club for fragging.
