The Holographic Acanthophyllia is a specimen of doughnut coral which is rainbow on a whole different level. We’ve covered our fair share of Acanthophyllias over the years, but the new multi-dimensional coral from Reefmaster Indonesia is a radically different specimen.
About 95% of the large meaty doughnut corals have a solid colored appearance, be it brown, red, green, or a mixture thereof. But roughly one in 20 Acanthophyllias have a spotted appearance, which look pretty different from their solid-colored counterparts.
Dot paintings by ancient peoples go back tens of thousands of years and the artistic style has been a favorite for generations because our eyes like to connect the dots. Similarly, our eyes connect the dots on spotted Acanthophyllias like a visual morse code that makes us believe that the harder we look, the more we see.
This is exactly the kind of optical illusion at play in Reefmaster’s Holographic Acanthophyllia. Due to the multicolored spots of this doughnut coral, the depth and detail of this coral is borderline hypnotic, and that’s not even factoring in for the fluorescent qualities of this corals colored spots.
The only image of this incredibly unique Acanthophyllia doesn’t even show this coral fully opened up yet – we imagine ti’ll be quite breathtaking when it’s fully settled in to captive conditions. Whoever gets this coral is going to have one fascinating LPS coral specimen and we hope that more corals like this one will see the light of day.
