When we first discovered the Green Splash Astreopora randalli growing in a turbid chalice coral reef in the Solomon Islands, we knew this coral was special. We’ve always had a special fascination for unusual corals, among them those that show varying degrees of green fluorescent protein infection, like World Wide Corals’ red & green Montipora capricornis, like Steve Garrett’s green jacket acro, and many more in the trade.
However these plating and scrolling green Astreopora are the first population of a specific coral that shows this level of unpredictable fluorescent green color seeming to permeate the coral tissue in dynamic ways. On our first trip to the Solomon Islands, we collected many of these strikingly colored Astreopora but they never shipped with the rest of the corals. However when we returned to the export station in the capital of Honiara, we were pleasantly surprised to see our initial collections of the Green Splash were alive and doing well in the holding tanks.
Fast forward a couple months and the corals have landed at Unique Corals in California, they’ve settled in to captive aquarium life and now they are looking much better and brighter than they ever did in the wild. It is extremely rewarding to see the Green Splash ‘Astreo’ that we discovered in captivity, doing well and ready for fragging and sharing.
There were no LEDs or blue lights underwater with which to appreciate the Green Splash Astreo in its full glory, so seeing it now in tanks is a sigh of relief after the immensely long journey that these corals have undertaken to get to us. We brought a few of the first frags of the Green Splash Astreopora to MACNA last weekend where we shared them with some of our favorite coral junky and collector friends and we can’t wait to see what they do with them and how they grow out in large display tanks in the future.
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