Red Acan Maxima for CHEAP!!!

[RandyO]

Originally posted by BOKER420
RandyO I was actually talking about the coral I bought on EBAY, not the reefermadness one. And I was just trying to point out that there are variations of a lot of different corals.

Hey,
You are correct that there are variations corals from species to species. And in my opinion there are many more corals out there and in our tanks that have not been described by experts like Jen Veron. But every single undescribed large polyp Musside gets the name Acanthastrea maxima slapped on it, when it's describer states it's only found in Oman waters.

So while I love to see all these unusual morphs, putting the name A. maxima to them all just seems ludicrous to me.











These are just the A. maximas in this thread. There's hundreds of them out there, and very few of them look the same.

[Creetin]

How do they know its only found in oman waters? Since the question is out, Who is the diver that looked over every square inch of reef everywhere and came to that conclusion?
Nothings impossable, No one can say without a doubt they are ONLY from omen waters can they?
This is not a flame, I see the point made over and over, and i just like to play devils advocate for a minute.

[burton14e7]

The bowerbanki's are quite large more along the lines of an American silver dollar than several inches though but they seem to have the more traditional colors we seek.

[RandyO]

More pictures of unusual Mussides

Photo from Atlantisaquarium.net



Photo by Slojmn




Photo by Calero


Photo by All Delight






Photo by reefer714

[RandyO]

I don't want to be known as the Acanthastrea police. It would be nice to be able to put a Genus and species name to all of these pieces, but at this point I don't think we have the tools to do so.

[RandyO]

Originally posted by Creetin
How do they know its only found in oman waters? Since the question is out, Who is the diver that looked over every square inch of reef everywhere and came to that conclusion?
Nothings impossable, No one can say without a doubt they are ONLY from omen waters can they?
This is not a flame, I see the point made over and over, and i just like to play devils advocate for a minute.

Hey Creetin,
I don't have names for you.(yet ) But the reefs were surveyed.

And this is what was found.

Distribution for A.maxima




Distribution for A.lordhowensis



Distribution for A.echinata



Distribution for A.subechinata




Distribution for Lobophyllia hemprichii


L.hemprichii



I would guess these are not estimates and that actual field research was done to get these Distribution maps.

[All Delight]

Mine is it, mine is it

[neyugn0w01]

Leave Randy alone. The guy probably give the most useful info in this forum.

[RandyO]

[BOKER420]

Here's a pic of mine with a metric ruler. The size is just about right on for a maxima.

[BOKER420]

The ruler is actually in the tank sitting just behind the coral.

[RandyO]

I'll be honest with you Boker. I've never seen a coral like yours before. To me, that's truly a one of a kind piece.(Until someone else shows one)
But I would not call it Acanthastrea Maxima. I do think it's more likely to be an undescribed species. Obviously you can't be 100% of a corals Genus just from a picture, but your piece has an Acanthastrea look to it. More than most of the unusual Mussides I've seen.

Any dead polyps on the underside? Try and get a photo of it at night, after the lights have been out for a few hours.

[chrisstie]

Bokers to me looks like a weird acan echinata ( or sub? im not good with that distinction) with a mutation with one big fat weird polyp and the rest of the colony starting to grow out from that one.

I'd be very curious to see what that looks like in a years time!

[BOKER420]

At night it has feeder tenticles out along the rim of each polyp. Just like a lord or micro. I'll frag a polyp or 2 here pretty soon. I want to see if the polyps grow large like the middle one. And a few of the smaller polyps are already borderline larger than a normal echinata polyp.

[BOKER420]

night time. It's pretty blurry though.