We’ve seen the two-toned colour anomaly affecting certain corals such as AquaticArt’s Seriatopora guttatus, but this chromatic phenomenon does not seem to be restricted amongst SPS corals. Most recently we stumbled upon a unique two-toned branching hammer coral, Euphyllia parancora, at Iwarna Aquafarm displaying the same abnormality.
Hammer corals come in a dizzying array of colours, predominantly green. Even then, they run the gamut from being dull green, to teal green, to retina-burning neon green. This unique piece displays a contrasting mix of teal and neon green on the same colony. It’s interesting to note that the neon green parts are distributed randomly across the predominantly green colony. Even within individual coralites, the neon green colour is not exclusive and can be seen splashed intermittently.
What causes this random two-toned appearance is quite a mystery. While it may not certainly be rare, it is rather uncommon and gives a particular coral an interesting appearance. Maybe a random gene expression triggered unevenly by certain stimuli? If we were to frag out the parts containing no neon green fluorescent streaks, would it still develop eventually since it affected part of the original colony? Whatever the case, it’s nice to look at and it makes for a good subject for home fragging experiments.
Yellow and gold are two colours that we’re seeing more of recently in hammer corals. This colour form was once very rare but are now more obtainable and can be gotten regularly from Australia. The piece above is an example of a “gold” hammer that was photographed beside the two-toned hammer above. The humble hammer coral has taken a back seat to the ever increasing morphs and crazy-methaphorically-described-alien-outerspace-coloured-zoanthids, or crayon coloured SPS. These LPS paved the way for coral keeping years back and are still just as fun and hardy now.
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