The Bali Aquarium Armageddon Tenuis is just mind blowing!

For quite a few years now, the ‘Homewrecker’ Acropora tenuis has been high on the wish list of many reefers. We thought it will be difficult to beat that one, and take years before we would see any other tenuis better than that one. We were wrong, as Bali Aquarium just scored a crafted Acropora tenuis, that is just out of this world!

Some branches of the Armageddon tenuis are just half neon yellow, and half red with a pinch of green. Mind blowing!

Grafted corals are extremely rare and figure among the most sought after SPS on the reef scene. A lot of Montipora come grafted, with the GFP-infected Montipora digitata, being the latest coral strain to show up. But grafted Acropora, even though they belong to the same family as Montipora are a lot more difficult to source. Some grafted Acropora millepora have been showing up recently but they are very rare.

A very rare and nice specimen of Grafted Montipora digitata, being produced by Bali Aquarium

Bali Aquarium will release a couple colonies of grafted SPS corals that have been grown out of a single branch tip which appeared on a Maricultured Mother colony on one of their farm. They’ve been growing this frag into a couple new colonies over the last year, and will release the first one this month.

A close up of the Armageddon tenuis reveal the full spectrum of reef world colors.

What is very interesting about this coral, is that it shows, both very bright yellow and red, which are the 2 colors the most sought after in the reef aquarium community, as they are the one that glow the most under blue LED.

We have seen a lot of Acropora over 20 years of Mariculture but this coral kill them all!

This colony was grown in the ocean, we don’t know yet exactly, how it will react and color up in Aquarium conditions. But knowing that Acropora tenuis is probably the equivalent of the lab mouse for the scientific world. We’ve been culturing, maintaining, coloring up, breeding millions, and we know it’s probably the Acropora that reacts the best to reef aquarium conditions. Yellow tenuis are easy to keep, red tenuis tend to intensify in captivity. So they are no reason, these color would fade away. So keep your eyes open to grab a frag of these in the future.

So far these beauties will stay in Asia as Wave Corals in Korea and Coral Central in Japan are the lucky owner of this insane corals.

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.