If there is one thing that I am glad about in this hobby it’s that my taste in corals is pretty different from the mainstream. I like weirdo corals, weirdo colors and I especially love creeper corals which look like junk to casual onlookers but which have the potential to turn into amazing one-of-a-kind specimens. Case in point would be some colonies of Turbinaria heronensis and especially that orange Leptoseris mycetoseroides – before I gave it some TLC it just looked like an orange-ish plating coral that most chalice lovers would have passed over for no being ‘bright enough’.
Well it’s a good thing I am not one for gaudy corals because I took the orange dimpled chalice home and now it’s the most highly requested of frag of all my corals. This small orange fungiid coral is also an awesome example of how to find diamonds in the rough. To the untrained eye it may appear simply as a small and misshapen orange Cycloseris but master coral-seeker Ali of Amazing Aquariums & Reefs knows better. Orange cyclos come in all shades and shapes but there is no doubt that this little plate coral is a young tongue coral, Herpolitha sp. the likes of which are very rare, but this isn’t the first orange tongue coral that Ali has scored.
The case in point is that if you want to find the coolest of the cool corals you have to look closer and pay attention to detail, and you may be rewarded with a really neat coral that is the envy of all your reefer friends. If you’ve discovered unexpected coral scores share what it was and what tipped you off that the coral was unique enough to take home.
