Recently I gave a talk at a UK reefing show, where I gave my (British,) take on the American reefing scene. One of the many aspects I admire the most is the legacy corals, their sharing throughout the community, and the tales passed around with them. And one of those legacy corals – the Purple Monster – has resurfaced courtesy of Barnett Shutmann and Golden Reef Solomon Island LTD.
The Solomons were so-named in 1568 by the Spanish navigator Alvaro de Mendaña, who claimed that he had found the riches of King Solomon, or the biblical land of gold. And for reefers, in recent months we’ve benefitted from its ocean treasures, its aberrant angelfish, its flat Acropora pichoni, and the re-emergence of the Purple Monster, Acropora loripes. From the information we can gather, it all started with Steve Tyree back in 1995, but we found that via ReefBum’s website, who found his info via reefs.com, and Austin Lefevre, who quoted Tyree from Facebook. Here’s a shortened version!
“Hello Reefers,
Thought I would do a little write-up and explain how the Purple Monster coral came into the captive coral reef market. And also how the whole Limited Edition exotic naming of corals began.
Back when the PM was imported, 1995 from the Solomon Islands, the keeping of Acropora within the US was just beginning. The very first Acropora colony sold in a store was in my reef tank at the time and had grown in captivity to about 2 feet x 1 3/4 feet x 1 1/2 feet in size. Acquired it around June 1992. So we were three years into keeping Acropora in the US. And yes most were not very colorful. We did experiment with the colorful Loripes from Fiji in 1993 and 1994 but were running into KH issues and the first KH crashes. So there was not a whole lot of color beyond brown and green.
Me and three other aquarists in the Laguna Hills area decided to try to buy a box of Solomons Transhipped Acropora through Aquatic Depot. Getting in Acropora from anywhere but Indonesia was still rare. And the initial Fiji Loripes colonies were very colorful but proved difficult for the captive market at the time.
When I picked up that tranship order, the Aquatic Depot workers were very excited. They said it was the best box of corals they had ever seen. There were 4 very medium to large PM colonies in the box.
Only one of those colonies survived past the first week. The largest one of the box which I had placed in my tank. The colonies had been roughed up fairly bad in shipping. Eventually the Purple Monster began to show its first growth. I did not call it the Purple Monster (PM) and initially did not like the name. But it was what everyone else called it, so the name stuck. There was no way in the world I was going to frag the coral for anyone at the time. Fragging Acropora was still kind of unheard of and no one really had a clue how to do it properly with good success.
A few months later I got hooked up with a major coral importer and for a while was the number one Acropora transhipper in the country. Stores were buying colonies direct from me. Then it all fell apart as things tend to do over time. And I was talked into fragging the PM to raise money and sell frags for $50 each. Who was going to pay $50 for an Acro frag? At the time you could buy a small colony for $40 to $50 retail.
Eventually financial pressures convinced me to give it a go. Listed PM frags for $50 to my email list and people started buying them. So the whole Limited Edition craze began. And it was crazy back then. When I listed a new LE coral, my phone would ring non stop for 2 to 3 hours. People would get mad at me if they did not get a timely reservation. Very weird situation. But the good news was that a market for captive SPS coral frags existed and was born.
To sum it up in a nut shell, the Purple Monster was the first $50 a frag captive coral. And it made me think that captive grown was the best way to go.
Steve Tyree”
So the purple monster first came to the hobby from the Solomon Islands in 1995, courtesy of Steve Tyree and his suppliers. It was one of the first named corals, one of the first fragged acros, and the first $50 acro frag. But by the mid-2010s it was still incredibly rare with Jake Adams saying “Getting a frag of this rare creature is not an easy affair and seeing a small colony of Purple Monster is like seeing an aquarium unicorn.” So Jake being Jake, flew out to the Solomon Islands in 2015 to search for the OG Purple Monster himself, with Tim Kelley, Unique Corals, and Triton. And he found it!
Now, nearly 10 years later, Barnett Shutmann of RVS and Golden Reef Solomon Island has also struck gold in finding the Purple Monster there. It’s incredibly beautiful in both form and color, with that characteristic dense Christmas Tree shape, purple color, and white polyps. Although nearly thirty years later, Golden Reef has theirs labeled as Acropora cf. valida. A.loripes can vary its form depending on wave action (according to Corals of the World,) but we’ll leave it to the coral taxonomists to identify an aquarium Purple Monster colony to species level.
If, like me, you can’t wait to get your hands on a piece of reefing history it’s available to retailers via our sponsor Vibrant Corals.
Thank you to everyone involved in the quest for the Purple Monster Acropora. One of the original legacy corals!
