Interest in large polyp stony corals with super flowy tentacles has catapulted the Euphyllia corals to hyper popularity in recent years. The very fast growing and diverse torch corals are king of this trend but elegance corals are not far behind.
Although not technically a Euphyllia, the elegance or Catalaphyllia corals can eventually look hyper similar to torch corals when the coral is completely inflated and long sweeper tentacles outstretched. The base coloration of elegance corals is almost always some shade of green, but the tips of the tentacles is where the real variability of ‘Cats‘ is to be found.
The most common elegance corals have pink tentacle tips, so in the nineties and early 2000s the high demand strain was purple tip elegance corals. However now that we have a great supply chain from Australia the new elegance coral status symbol is arguably the gold or yellow tip Catalaphyllia, with orange tipped colonies being the cream of the crop.
To be honest it’s a really fine line in shade between the gold and orange tip elegance corals but they are easily distinguished when kept side by side. Elegance corals can be propagated but it’s nowhere near as simple as snapping off some extra branches like in torch corals, so Catalaphyllia is definitely more of a showpiece or trophy coral. This wasn’t lost on the customers of Eye Catching Coral who recently flaunted a nice crop of gold tip elegance corals which they quickly sold out of.
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