Eye Catching Coral just sent over some pictures of a Fiji Zoanthid discovered with wildly colored tentacles. Like the Hypercolor shirts from the nineties, these Fiji Zoanthids have an indeterminate color pattern which extends from the mouth, to the oral disc and even more so in the tentacles. As you can see in the image above it looks like the Fiji Hypercolor Zoanthids have two morphs trying to be expressed.
Some of the Hypercolor Zoathids appear to to start out with green tentacles which eventually develops an orange tip, with the orange becoming the dominant color with increasing size. Furthermore the fluorescent green and orange colors seem to blend for an extremely intense glow, but some polyps show an asymmetrical color dominance. Upon closer examination it almost looks like there’s two different color patterns within these zoanthids so we could be dealing with some kind of chimera.
Whatever the deal is with these Hypercolor Zoanthids from Fiji, Eye Catching Corals received at least two different rocks from Walt Smith so there’s likely to be more of these gems being imported. Perhaps zoanthid collections have moved into a new region of Fiji or Eye Catching Coral may have gotten lucky with this really crazy morph. Either way, we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled and whoever ends up with the Hypercolors need to report back on how the odd zoanthids behave in aquaria.
