We have been lucky to have experienced wild twin Scolys in our wholesale days and read with interest when Ultra Coral Australia released information back in 2022 on how they propagated them by cutting the base off.
Well, it turns out several Aussie coral companies have been busy propagating their native Homophyllia species and even spawning them, and Corals.com is this week showing off a man-made twin scoly that they have just imported into the United States.
The coral has come courtesy of exporter Live Corals Australia, who told Reef Builders they have been propagating scolys this way for the past three years.
“We have experimented with them a fair bit but there wasn’t much interest from the market at the time,” Live Corals Australia co-director Travis told us. “To get to the size of the picture above it’s around 2 years.”
“We cut them in a way that they regenerate the new scoly from the cut side, we have successfully split them from each other but have not had a lot of luck in those pieces then regenerating for the second time.”
“At our facility, we do a lot of scoly propagation the conventional way by cutting 1 into 4, it seems a lot faster than cutting from the back.”
Jonathan from Corals.com is listing the pictured piece as a Double Headed Master Scolymia and is offering the Siamese twin for $1499.99.
Scolymia australis was renamed Homophyllia australis in 2015, but the familiar Scolymia genus name (and its abbreviations,) has stuck in the trade. CITES still regulates them as Scolymia australis too.
