[Travis L. Stevens]

It depends on how you look at "equal". There is only one Ricordea yuma, so therefore all Yumas ARE equal. They are all the same species, and they all come from the same Indo-Pacific. Tank raised, wild caught, low light, high light, whatever. A Yuma is a Yuma is a Yuma. Now that's the technical side of it.

On the other hand, R. yuma seem to have difficulty adjusting to changes. Wild caught Yumas often don't fair well simply because you can't recreate the environment they were caught in in your home aquarium without knowing where they came from (we're talking relation to reef placement, not geographical location). If they were picked up from a heavily shaded area and you put them under a 400w metal halide, they won't do well. Same thing goes for amount of water flow. Ones that are taken out of lower lagoonal type flow aren't going to do well with high flow aquariums. Luckily, captive propogated Yumas tend to fair better because most people have generally the same types of tanks in regards to light intensity and flow amount. With all that said, I can tell you that the color of a Yuma has absolutely no bearing on its hardiness. On the other hand, it can be an indicator of the conditions it has lived in. But the story of the relationship of pigmentation to ocean depth, temperature, and bleaching habits are stories left for a different thread.