Rare soft corals?

chrisdaphish · #1 07/26/2006, 03:43 PM

what are hte most rare softies or the ones that are most sought after?

tinyreef · #2 07/26/2006, 08:32 PM

"rarest" ~ anthomastus?

"most sought after" would probably be some LE (Limited Edition good marketing ploy) corals?

chrisdaphish · #3 07/26/2006, 09:55 PM

how about best looking?

sammy33 · #4 07/26/2006, 10:34 PM

Some of the Palythoa such as Purple People Eaters are my favorites. Somewhat rare and rather nice looking with the purple/green.

Psychographic · #5 07/26/2006, 11:36 PM

How can a coral be a Limited Edition? If you can keep propogating it's not Limited.

tinyreef · #6 07/27/2006, 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Psychographic
How can a coral be a Limited Edition? If you can keep propogating it's not Limited.

exactly why it's good marketing.

Jeanniee · #7 07/27/2006, 02:19 PM

Sammy those are gorgeous--where did you get them??

sammy33 · #8 07/28/2006, 10:53 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jeanniee
Sammy those are gorgeous--where did you get them??

I got tremendously lucky with a local trade. I had to give up a pH monitor and a bit of cash but I feel that it was worth it.

sammy33 · #9 08/07/2006, 11:14 PM

Any other ideas about "holy grail" softies?

I am starting to beleive that Dendronepthya falls into the rare or holy grail category. There was once a time when SPS corals were difficult to keep and now most of the Tank of the Months are majority SPS tanks.

Check out this thread on Dendronepthya

reefnewbie54321 · #10 08/08/2006, 04:12 PM

Blue Xenia and the less rare Blue Anthelia but both look very nice. There are neon green toadstools wich are pretty rare and the less rare neon green nepthea wich are two of my favorites. Yellow, Pink, or Red Ric's are very rare. Purple Lemnalia is also hard to find. All very cool looking corals too. As far as looks go and not rareity I would also include true white xenia.

apex003 · #11 08/08/2006, 06:17 PM

cespitularia is also suppose to be rare, and looks pretty nice too.

Razzagas · #12 08/08/2006, 08:38 PM

reefnewbie:
where can you buy blue xenia/anthelia? Any pics?

chrisstie · #13 08/08/2006, 11:58 PM

I love my neon green toadstool. I can't wait for it to grow out a little bit.. so interesting looking and the green pops out even under my moonlight led

phishlet · #14 08/09/2006, 01:10 PM

How about this? Anybody have one or had one?

http://www.marinecenter.com/corals/c.../redsilkcoral/

chrisdaphish · #15 08/09/2006, 05:14 PM

wow that last one has amazing color..... never seen anything with that crazy of a bright color before.

reefnewbie54321 · #16 08/09/2006, 06:29 PM

BAD IDEA .... that coral is non-photosynthetic and has about a 99.9% failure rate. It is closely related to dendros and is impossible to keep long term so until someone finds a way to feed theses things I suggest you stay away even though they do have AMAZING colors its not worth it.

Razzagas,
Atlantis Aquarium had some Blue Anthelia but I see they are all out now. As for Blue Xenia that is a lot harder to find ... you might want to check out the Buy and Selling section because frags come up some time. The reason why it is so rare is because its a very slow grower and is not a good shipper. You shouldn't have a hard time finding Blue Anthelia though ... check out the list of sponsors I am sure some vendor has some in stock.

Here are some pictures of Blue Anthelia,

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...=Blue+Anthelia

Edit: I also browsed some vendors and found Blue Xenia at Atlantis Aquariums,

http://www.atlantisaquarium.net/images/lpsxeniablue.jpg

If your lucky enough you may even be able to find some Green Xenia .... if you do give me a holler because I'm still looking

phishlet · #17 08/09/2006, 08:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by reefnewbie54321
BAD IDEA .... that coral is non-photosynthetic and has about a 99.9% failure rate. It is closely related to dendros and is impossible to keep long term so until someone finds a way to feed theses things I suggest you stay away even though they do have AMAZING colors its not worth it.

Is this from personal experience? Have you ever kept one? Know anybody who has?

I'd like to hear from anybody who has one.

I'd vote for this one for best color.

Razzagas · #18 08/09/2006, 08:54 PM

thanks reefnewbie54321!

Razzagas · #19 08/09/2006, 08:57 PM

reefnewbie54321:
This place appears to have green xenia:
http://www.aquacon.com/coralaquacultured.html

Hormigaquatica · #20 08/10/2006, 03:18 AM

phishlet:
Dendronephthya, scleronephthya, and other "carnation" or "silk" corals are pretty much impossible to keep as of yet, mainly cause noone (including scientific literature) has any idea what makes up most of their diet. I had a tank dedicated to them- fed everything from phytoplankton to oyster eggs to bacteria, and no luck. Im aware of less than half a dozen people world wide who have had any real success with those corals. Its a shame- theyre all absolutely beautiful, but from the moment theyre collected theyre pretty much condemned to death within a matter of months at best

phishlet · #21 08/10/2006, 08:36 AM

Thanks. I realize they difficulty of care. I've kept dendros, and scleros in the past with some success. 13 years ago when I started salt water these kinds of corals were more widely accessbile (sadly) because it was known that they didn't require "high lighting". So the thought was they could be kept in our small, immature captive reefs (along with our undergravel filters and standard flourescent light strips).

They certainly are beautiful. What struck me as interesting (and maybe even deceptive) was the quote on marinecenter.com. "...their care is not as difficult as it is often assumed." Then they go on to rate it only 3 out of 5 for difficulty of captive care.

ycrazyy · #22 08/11/2006, 02:49 PM

First off I want to say this is a great thread. I find it funny because I have quite a few of the corals spoken about in here and I guess never realized that they were rare. I have a 24g nano and have 2 neon green sinularia that were given to me and are doing great, a purple nepthea that is just doing ok, when I switched over to MH lighting he wasn't doing so well and had to frag him to save him. I also have a bunch of blue anthelia (pulsing, sort of) that I got for free at my LFS and are growing like weeds throughout my tank. I would say that all of them are pretty easy to care for as I do nothing special for them, the sinularia's absolutely love the MH though and are thriving as are the blue anthelia's which are at the highest point in the tank. I'll try and get some pics up later.

reefnewbie54321 · #23 08/11/2006, 06:39 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Razzagas
reefnewbie54321:
This place appears to have green xenia:
http://www.aquacon.com/coralaquacultured.html

Wow thanks for the link ... they have african blue xenia too. Looks like I will be ordering some.

As far as personal experience of "silk" or "carnation" corals no I don not have any but I would not like to experience killing a coral if you know what I mean. Check out the advanced topics section and find the thread about keeping dendros. We do not know how to take care of them and untill some one puts in the time and effort to figure it out the most success your going to have is a month ... 2 months if your lucky. If thats what you consider success then go for it. I also dont want you to take this as me being rude I just hate for people to think that they can keep things that are realy not meant for a captive system yet. I just wanted to point out some facts and give you a chance to read through the dendro thread before you made your decicion of buying one.

Just think about it, if we knew how to keep corals without light that would knock out the #1 cost. And carnation/silk corals come in such bright colors that even out compete SPS. I want to keep them just as bad as the next guy but I also dont want to waste my money on something tahts going to die in 3 weeks

phishlet · #24 08/11/2006, 07:48 PM

The longest I've kept a Dendro alive is about 2 years which is a lot longer than the 2 months you're indicating. The 2 years was had by daily direct target feeding of my own fresh home grown 3 strains of phytoplankton and cyclopeeze. But to me 2 years is still not the kind of "success" I'd like. To date, my oldest coral my first bubble coral from about 11 years ago.

So anybody else have success with the Scleronepthea corals? Thanks for the comments reefnewbie but I'm not really inquiring about true dendros here. I'm hoping somebody has info about the Scleronepthea I pictured above.

The blue xenia is very cool. You'll enjoy it if you get some. However, they are very delicate and difficult shippers. My success with blue xenia came from a stalk purchased from a LFS. If anybody wants any fiji pink pulsing in the west Michigan area let me know.

sammy33 · #25 08/11/2006, 07:55 PM

I think that Clavularia (Clove Polyp) is a bit rare. One of the LFS around here has only had one colony in the last several years. I have seen them on some of the online sites but not often. This is especially true for the neon green center color morph.