First pics is of one of my Acroporas from my 65 SPS/Clam tank. This one is brown with light powder Blue tips and is about 5 inches tall.

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Second Pic is of another SPS coral Hydnopora Rigida. Its glow in the dark bright green. Its a pretty fast grower too. This one is a frag from the mother colony that took a tumble and got damaged and started to RTN on me. So I fraged off a 1/2 branch and one year later I have a nice 4-5 inch colony agian! Dodged a bullet there for sure...

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The last pic is of several small Sarcophyton (Toad Stool Leathers) that I have going in this prompagation tank. You can also see the Live Rock Rubble pile at the end too. This is getting colonized and growing coralline algae while I wait to get the filter system up for the 75 gallon tank that I set up last night. Unfortunately I am still waiting on parts to arrive from Oceanic and from the glass shop so I can finish converting a 55 gallon tank to a sump/refugium. I will be featuring this tank set up in an up coming article for the SW section of the forum in the not too distant future

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Well, I hope you enjoyed the eye candy....

nice tanks Ritsuko.

man thats a colorful tank! cool closeups!

Cant say Im huge on SPS, but those are some real beauts. Good work Rits!

--Dan

Thanks guys for the great comments and support! I appreciate it. Just wanted to try an open eyes to some of the things that are out there in the world and possibilities to expand on in aquarium keeping. Its a mighty big world out there!

True enough the 65 aint looking too bad since its resurection. Should have seen it before the Heater broke and zapped the tank with 120 volts! Thats okay though...I have this 75 cycling right now and I have set the bar to a much higher level with that tank. I have all my favorite dealers out there on a mission and with thier ear to the ground, head hunting for some collector grade stuff for me. I think given a year or two I will be able to recover well enough, I think....

Are SPS' rare?

--Dan

Some are and some arent. You can find the general run of the mill "Ho-Hum" brown or green ones easily and reasonably priced. On the other hand a Purple Monster Acro from Steve Tyree's original colony or an ORA or Cali "Blue Tort" is really tough to come by and you pay dearly when you do find them. Generally speaking the more vivid colored it is and or the more rarer the color morph the more insaine the price is and the longer the waiting list are.

For instance a (button sized coral frag) Leng Sy Tri-color Montipora cap is about 99.99 plus shipping from an on line dealer WHEN you can find one available. On the other hand you can get average orange colored or green Monti. Caps for about 20-30 bucks. Typical average Mashall Island Acro frags about 1.5 inches go for as little as 20.00 but that same sized ORA Blue Tort frag would easily demand 89.00 plus, WHEN available. It depends upon what you want and the supply and demand factors heavily into the equation. Some corals are limited by CITIS Agreement to allow for the harvest of only about 100 corals of this type or another and if that is on everyones "must have list" then you can bet your going to be waiting in line for a while and pay dealy when you do buy it. Before the RBTA's started to flood the market, I paid sight unseen 450.00 for one! These days a RBTA is retailing for about 69-89 bucks.

So no Acroporas arent hard to come by or rare for the most part but if you want that "off the chain" looking one then expect to look long and hard for it and then pay dearly for it.

I just bought a thumb nail sized frag of a increadibly bright Neon Pink Montipora Cap frag of unknown origin. I paid 60.00 bucks for it and felt like I was getting the steal of the century! Had this guy I boought it from still had the other two I would have bought all three no questions asked and been willing to pay more for them than I did! Its a coral I will be able to grow out into a nice colony frag a few pieces off of it and easily make my money back on them in 6-9 months from now!