Flaming Sunrise from Candy Corals is one of a Helluva Acropora speciosa

Candy Corals from Canada, recently acquired an amazing Acropora speciosa from Malaysia that they are calling the Flaming Sunrise. We’ve long been fans of these particular deepwater and elegant shaped species of Acropora that we used to get from Indonesia, but have never we’ve seen it in that particular coloration.

The light blue skin with bright yellow polyps with a slash pink ring.

It’s a good sign that we are starting to see some corals from the Indo-Malaysian area popping up again. And the beauty of these corals, is that they are not coming from clean, gin-like transparent waters but from dirty, turbid water.

These corals are not adapted to very high water quality, and thus acclimate very well to aquarium maintenance and have the option to become ‘designer’ aquarium corals.In that case, this particular piece was collected in a shallow, 4-8 m (12-25 ft) deep, Acropora-covered reef in the North east of Borneo, very close to the Indonesian and Filipino border.

This is what this particular piece looked when the collector got it.

The most interesting about this particular piece and most of this region deep water or turbid water corals, is that they can turn into real beauty. But under the precious care of Afnan of Candy Corals, under bright T5 lighting, the light green skeleton turned into dark light blue, giving even more contrast to the bright yellow and pink polyps.

The pink lip of the bright yellow polyps contrasts with the dark light blue color and the result is amazing.

What is even more remarkable, is that the culture tank, doesn’t have crazy perfect water quality parameter. It is loaded with fish, and the skimmer is regularly turned off, so nutrients can accumulate.

In this particular system, Nitrates are 8 ppm, while Phosphate are at 0.04 ppm, which is kind of a sweet spot for dirty water acros. A little bit of Nitrates is always good for dirty water acros to reach full color potential. Afnan also doses AcroPower from two little fishies to feed his acros and increase coloration.

Above view on this astonishing Acropora colony.

Candy corals was particularly famous for scoring crazy insane LPS, it’s nice to see that they leveled up their game into the SPS field. The Flaming Sunrise is a crazy wild new strain of exotic Acropora and we hope to receive a frag of this piece and start culturing it in the studio someday.

Vincent Chalias

Vincent is a coral passionate aquarist with extensive experience in the industry, travelling the world to learn about corals. His background is a master degree in Marine Aquaculture. He set up the first Indonesian Coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent over 20 years in Indonesia running them. He's been extensively diving and documenting corals all over the Indo-Pacific.