Gill_bucket
New member
Very true. 
Stealing names
- Thread starter Gill_bucket
- Start date
SEA-SALTED
New member
What I have an interest in is, how do they keep track of all the names? I sell a few frags, and always get asked "what are those called?" My response is,(if I don't know what the slang name is) OH, that? yes that's cool. IF it's cool i'll buy it. Not if it's brown zoas named "JF tidy turd polyps" 10yrs ago I was buying cool colonies for $40, now it's per polyp. CRAZY!!
Gill_bucket
New member
I have noticed some people have a hard time keeping the names straight, I don't know why but they always stick for me? Perhapse it's because I spend more time then I should looking at pics on the Internet. By the time I see a zoa in person I've usually seen it ten times on the web. I don't think I've ever paid $40 for a polyp, I usually wait till what i want is more common and the price comes down. Clearly some people are paying hundreds per polyp, most of them are planning on selling a couple to get there money back though. Perhapse I'm overly patient, but I'd rather buy two or three polyps with insane color and wait for them to grow out rather than buy a colony (of less impressive zoa) for the same price. Perhapse the name craze and the ability to keep smaller tanks are linked?
bobby65
New member
What's in a name
What's in a name
A lot of common names were started so that we could all have an easier way to tell different morphs apart instead of calling something orange with green eyes and green with green eyes, etc. With acropora they have specific scientific names that makes it easier to tell them apart, but with zoanthids there are hundreds of different morphs under one scientific name. Most people call some zoanthids palythoa when they are all actually zoanthids except true palythoa like purple deaths, nuclear greens, etc. Eventually stores caught on to making up fancy zoa names and they marketed them that way. After awhile people started paying more for "named" corals than unnamed corals, so now everyone is dreaming up crazy names for any new coral that comes along. What's worse is all the vendors out there that are renaming already named corals so they appear to be new and rare when they're not. Seems like this seller was just trying to find out if this zoa had a name by asking other people what they were.
Also, Tyree, Jason Fox, etc most all of their "named" corals came from other hobbyists. They were not the originators of those corals. So to assume that the lineage starts with them is incorrect. They are in the business of selling corals, so they when they get nice new stuff be it from a wholesaler or from another reefer they name it so they can make more money off of it. Just a fact. Another problem with lineage is that corals change depending on what tank they are in, acropora can look completely different depending on what light and flow they are under. A green mille in one person's tank might be a sunset mille in another person's tank. Feeling Peachy palys are actually Pink & Golds just their color changes under lower lighting. Corals change and morph all the time and hybridize and continue to do things we do not expect. So trying to pin down one coral and say that only one person can have lineage on that coral is pretty hard to do. Ask any famous coral scientist at MACNA if a red planet and an atl mirabilis are the same coral or not. :]
If you don't want to play the name game why buy named corals? I just buy what I like, I don't really care about the name. If a coral is doodoo brown and has the name Tyree on it I could care less. But if other people want to pay a fortune for a named coral I guess that's their right. There are plenty of reefers out there that don't know they have named corals and sell them for cheap, then there are others that name them and get crazy prices for stuff. I think its kind of sad that people actually pay more attention to a name than the actual coral nowadays, but I guess that's the way it goes.
Maybe you should talk with some of that seller's customers and see what their reputation is before assuming that they're just trying to make a buck.
What's in a name
A lot of common names were started so that we could all have an easier way to tell different morphs apart instead of calling something orange with green eyes and green with green eyes, etc. With acropora they have specific scientific names that makes it easier to tell them apart, but with zoanthids there are hundreds of different morphs under one scientific name. Most people call some zoanthids palythoa when they are all actually zoanthids except true palythoa like purple deaths, nuclear greens, etc. Eventually stores caught on to making up fancy zoa names and they marketed them that way. After awhile people started paying more for "named" corals than unnamed corals, so now everyone is dreaming up crazy names for any new coral that comes along. What's worse is all the vendors out there that are renaming already named corals so they appear to be new and rare when they're not. Seems like this seller was just trying to find out if this zoa had a name by asking other people what they were.
Also, Tyree, Jason Fox, etc most all of their "named" corals came from other hobbyists. They were not the originators of those corals. So to assume that the lineage starts with them is incorrect. They are in the business of selling corals, so they when they get nice new stuff be it from a wholesaler or from another reefer they name it so they can make more money off of it. Just a fact. Another problem with lineage is that corals change depending on what tank they are in, acropora can look completely different depending on what light and flow they are under. A green mille in one person's tank might be a sunset mille in another person's tank. Feeling Peachy palys are actually Pink & Golds just their color changes under lower lighting. Corals change and morph all the time and hybridize and continue to do things we do not expect. So trying to pin down one coral and say that only one person can have lineage on that coral is pretty hard to do. Ask any famous coral scientist at MACNA if a red planet and an atl mirabilis are the same coral or not. :]
If you don't want to play the name game why buy named corals? I just buy what I like, I don't really care about the name. If a coral is doodoo brown and has the name Tyree on it I could care less. But if other people want to pay a fortune for a named coral I guess that's their right. There are plenty of reefers out there that don't know they have named corals and sell them for cheap, then there are others that name them and get crazy prices for stuff. I think its kind of sad that people actually pay more attention to a name than the actual coral nowadays, but I guess that's the way it goes.
Maybe you should talk with some of that seller's customers and see what their reputation is before assuming that they're just trying to make a buck.
Last edited:
ingtar_shinowa
New member
if people start DNA testing those corals HAVE to cost more to cover the costs of the testing. I only look at names to get a general idea what the polyp will look like. The vast majority of stuff I buy is wysiwyg anyway.
This.
But at the same time, if you call something Tyree or Jason Fox etc, then that coral better have come from them in lineage. Regardless if they are just rebranding someone elses coral.
ingtar_shinowa
New member
I totally agree about that. but I mean how many 'branded' mummy eye chalice are out there. Its a grean and orange chalice. I still look everytime.
Similar threads
