Coral Colorblind is a new installment here on Reef Builders where we attempt to sort out what it means when a coral is labeled with a certain color. There are way too many unscrupulous coral sellers who are being dishonest about the color of their corals through excessive blue lighting, vivid color camera settings, photo shopping and a whole lot of imagination.
Orange. Hammer. Coral. Sounds simple enough right? If it was then why is it that so many vendors are selling off-colored Euphyllias like hammers, torches and frogspawns as orange when they are clearly closer to sand, tan and sometimes just plain brown? We think we speak for many reefers when we say we are sick and tired of all of the creative color imagineering that these guys are using just to squeeze out a few extra bucks from an unsuspecting coral buyer. Of course we’re really looking at the online coral vendors who rely on their photos to represent their corals to their customers. Let this be a warning to the vendors who are walking the line because we’re going to start calling you out for selling corals that in no way resemble the pictures you’re posting. If your orange hammer coral doesn’t look pretty darn close to the specimen in the image above then don’t call it an orange hammer coral, mmk?
