A coral farm in the South of Spain has a wild, grafted Acropora tenuis, which we have never seen before.
“Attached is a pic of an Acropora tenuis that came grafted from the wild,” Reef Nook’s Biel told Reef Builders. “It has the same colors and mix as the very well-known RRC Rainbow Splice, i.e. yellow and pink, but it is a tenuis. This coral was part of a bigger colony that died upon arrival at the European supplier (I guess due to stress after the long journey).”
“So far as I know, this is the 1st one reported with that color grafting within the tenuis species (now called Acropora bifaria, due to its origin: Indonesia). In my experience, rainbow tenuis usually have polyps with a strong yellow very close to the corallite, and then its own color in the rest of the polyp body (typically green red, or yellow,… depending on the specimen).”
“Typically, wild grafting used to be quite localized like we can see in the picture of the large wild millepora colony in this article: https://reefbuilders.com/2022/10/30/grafted-millepora-are-not-as-rare-as-we-thought/), and farmers around the world isolate that very small region and start to propagate the grafting. In this case, though, the grafting is already spread out along the different branches.”
What we think
Spliced and grafted Acropora are some of the most sought-after, most expensive Acros available. We’ve seen grafted Millies, even man-made grafted acros, but this tenuis (now Acropora bifaria,) is an absolute delight, the quality photos also highlighting the depth of the slice down all the branches of what is left of the colony. The before and after pics show the great work that Reef Nook has already done conditioning this rare coral in just a few weeks and we are completely in love with its pink, gold and green, Rhubarb, and Custard coloration.
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