We’ve all seen Euphyllia corals exhibit a staggering degree of diversity in the appearance of their tissue, polyp and tentacles leading us to portmanteaux them into all different kinds of categories. We’ve seen the Torchspawn, the Frammer, but we posit to you that this colony we admired at ReefStock Australia is most deserving of being called a Ham-Spawn because of all the Euphyllia hybrids, this one is quite distinctive.
This eye catching LPS coral was discovered in the pop-up boutique that Fish Are Friends built for their booth at ReefStock Australia- we were immediately drawn to the thick, sparsely branching tentacles of this Fimbriaphyllia which at first is reminiscent of the jelly-bean style hammer corals from Queensland, but the toxic green color and bifurcated tips must originate with a frogspawn ancestor. By contrast there are many more varieties of Frammer coral that are usually little more than a frogspawn with slightly blunt tips to their skinny tentacles.
We’ve seen some jellybean Ancoras branch a tentacle here and there, and we’ve seen some frogspawn develop quite thick, large octopus arms for tentacles but the Ham-Spawn is a memorable example of the extreme range that can be appreciated with the Euphyllia corals. The humorous part of spotlighting the Hamspawn is that it wasn’t even close to the most exciting coral at ReefStock Australia, nor in the booth of Fish Are Friends as their tanks were overflowing with more unique Euphyllia colonies than you could possibly hope to fit into your tank.
Hybrid Euphyllia Coral are (Slightly) More Common Than we Think
