Last week Corals Down Under collected one of the most unique Monitpora’s I’ve seen in sometime. CDU director Gemma Moore told me it was collected in the Queensland region around 15 meters down in decently high flow.
This phenotype of what is likely Montipora tuberculosa looks like a cross between the CDU Gold Rush and Mystic Sunset with an extra color or two. Few Montipora collected tend to have more than 3-4 base colors with the traditional rainbow Montipora and some of the “grafted” setosa’s and caps being exceptions. The inclusion of so many colors in one piece brings a new dimension of rarity to Montipora.
The ever popular “Mystic Sunset”
The CDU Goldrush – a similar strain to the sunset sporting an orange base and green polyps
The CDU Prismatic – Mystic Sunset meets Gold Rush + green and isolated patches of darker maroon/purple and even yellow
Hopefully this strain lands in the states so we can acquire a frag to grow out at the studio. If this piece does appear at any notable wholesalers it would likely be an extremely good piece to invest in. If it grows as fast as other tuberculosa’s it’s likely to be a hot market item for at least a year before saturation is reached in the market and the price begins to drop.
I’m excited to see what other Monti’s CDU may be able to pull from this region in the future.
