Coral Monster has made a splash for some remarkable (and expensive) corals before – but in what we think is a first for Japan, they’ve got some Hype zoanthid strain which is right up there with the best of them. The combination of speckled orange oral disc with olive green tentacles tipped in yellowish orange is quite an eye catching pattern falling somewhere between a Master Krakatoa and Flaming Mohicans.
And Coral Monster is proud of them too pricing these Mohican x Krakatoa style Palythoa at around 37,800¥ which is about $350 per polyp!! This might be an eye-popping sticker price but you can see from the images of the original rock that they only got a handful of them, and it’s still a far cry from the $2,425 that was paid for a single polyp of the Krakatoa and Emperor zoanthids.
We’re used to Asian reef aquarium markets overpaying for fancy LPS corals and super rare fish but this is one of the first time we’ve seen this kind of ‘value’ placed on a collectible and propagate-able strain of soft coral. I say it’s about time that other countries subscribed to the coral-hype-train especially when it comes to extremely aspirational corals like the hardy and fast growing zoanthids. [Coral Monster]
