I have a thread over at reef central to try to id my large coral and i found this. Its shape looks exact color is slightly different but i am pounding it with light. A few people guessed it was a garf bonzai. i didnt think so until i found this link. garf bonsai - Page 3 - Reef Central Online Community post #65 is the one they all look close but this one looks exact
the under structure is exact in color and all i will take a pic of it if i can get a decent shot but any help is appreciated i think its very close if not exact its just that it has over 700 par on it and growing closer to the light but the middle shaded areas are dark with the top down whots which are hard to get
Tim, do you have any frags of it lower down, under less par in your tank? if not maybe put a nice size chunk down lower, that color it gets in the shaded are is sweeet.
:TWOCENTS
Not low but lower it does look darker
+1 on maybe putting a frag on the bottom to see if it change its color. The frag I got from you still hasn’t change its color at all. The base is still light purple and the body it self is still that light tan/pinkish color. At first I thought it might be purple vidalia, but most of those I’ve seen are pointy tip not blunt like GARF, like the colony that you got. But do to it being in the high light area maybe that’s why its not coloring up like it suppose to.
I have 4 different type of purple corals in my tank. 1 I believe is the deep purple vidalia, the one that you want a frag of. The other one is light purple also believe it a vidalia as well. The other 2 I have is GARF bonsai from Craig (Zona332) right now it being shaded by a colony of other acro, so the color is not there. The other one is mystery coral that I got that was brown and now it deep purple with green polyp and blunt tip, thinking it might be GARF bonsai, I hope so.
bottom one looks like it could be a fiji or aussie acro subulata
all the pictures are of the same coral. One is older and the others are top down and from the front its shape looks like that grown out bonzai on the link. But color is off some i cant capture the true color in the picture but its pretty close. those who have seen it in person know. It does grow fast thats what makes me second guess it being a bonzai. But my hippo tang sleeps in it, in the same spot every night,and that spot is a deep purple/blue.i will frag again and place it low.
also i was told bonsai are a. nana or nana scientific name but there are many types of bonzai too theres garf, garf purple, potters and just bonzai. i am not sure, its in the same area i believe. oh check this out too if you don’t know about it i recommend bookmarking it or adding to favorites. http://sdmas.com/corals/species.php
the garf purple bonzai has bright yellow/green polyps.
http://www.garf.org/39/1000.html
does yours. ?
they are green, but i thought i had a garf version before and the polyps on that were big. the ones on this are smaller i don’t think its a garf i think its some version of a bonsai but on the rc thread i posted all those look different and people still call them garf. a lot look like subulata, valida, and secale which are all pretty similar anyway
People give them the same name as the coral that fetches more money then the others? Mysterious why people would do that?
Unfortunately there are way too many people that pop in and out of this hobby trying to make $ and failing. Way too often close look alikes are offered with a specific name that are wild imports and not of the same genetic line. If the end user is satisfied you could say there may be no harm, but if your’s lacks a significantly desirable feature that a true collector is looking for…
If you really wanted to be sure the only way I can imagine would be to purchase a “real deal” legit clone and place it in the same tank at the same level and leave it there for several months.
When you go to sell it I would recommend calling it an Acropora that looks very similar to a GARF bonsai and allow people to make up there own mind. Is this the reason you would like to positively ID it?
I want to know what I have. Also when I sell drags I’d like to tell them what they’re getting. Im not in it to make money just cover some maint cost Its so big I’m not selling it for a lot just want to sell it. It was a big hit at the swap. Really now I’m very curious to what it is even if it were a garf I’d still sell it at the same price. My problem is when I buy corals they don’t have a name or the name is made up. And if I could I’d it I could research it and find the proper conditions for it to maximize color and growth.
The growth is great!its the color your concerned with?i think you should cut several frags of it and give several different people a piece and see what it does in others tanks. Who knows you might have too much light to bring out the true color,but the perfect amount for exoskeleton growth?
Unfortunately an exact ID is almost impossible and if you were able to where would you look up the proper conditions for maximum growth and color? A positive ID wouldn’t allow you to look it up in a catalog that says keep it with X flow and X par and feed it X zoo plankton with a size of .23mm.
As others suggested you can try creating three even size cuttings and placing them at three different lighting conditions with ~ the same flow and then see which looks best and what grows best and share this info with us.
I did not mean to accuse you of just being in it to make money, but just wanted to point out many people are and will attach fancy names to similar corals that are not genetic clones. You may have found some similar pictures of GARF bonzi, but perhaps these people found something that looked similar and just figured it was the same or found something similar and thought they could make more money calling it the same thing. Or perhaps they bought it from the same genetic line and kept in high PAR and ended up with the same thing you have. You may try to reach out to the people who made posts with similar images and find out how much PAR the corals received.
I’ll say one thing, regardless of what it is I would be interested in trading for a piece once I have some room open up in my QT tanks.
i figured it would be hard i looked on the coral id and found a few close really need to frag it let that piece die and send it to have the coralites examined, but thats too hard. i will put one low. I’ll make my own up I’ll call it super awesome coral lol. ill frag a few soon and grow them for a month or two put some low and some high see what they do and sell em. whenever you want it lmk ill get some growing soon. i sold one at the swap for $5 it was small. an accidental fragging.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:14, topic:5258”]
I did not mean to accuse you of just being in it to make money, but just wanted to point out many people are and will attach fancy names to similar corals that are not genetic clones. [/quote]
In all fairness it kinda sounded that way to me also. When someone asks for i.D. help and gets a couple paragraphs about “why” folks may want to id, then i could see it being taken the wrong way…
my 1st thought after reading that post was “look, jon’s on his soapbox again” :
:
I def agree with you Jon, and usually appreciate your passion for the hobby and disgust with the not-so-great aspects of the hobby. But i could easily see someone thats not as nice as Tim taking offense and turning things ugly…
:TWOCENTS
Now, that being said… I cant wait to grow out the piece that i got from tim a couple of weeks ago. I’ll be selling mad “garfs purple bonsai” frags at next years swap ::
besides, most people will probably kill it before they figure it out anyway… come to think of it, i did that myself last year… and would still love to know exactly why, thats another thread though verdict_in