One of the most exciting aspects of acquiring new coral frags is the fact that you can’t entirely predict what the coral will look like as it grows into your tank. Many corals will “color up” exhibiting new colors or brighter shades of existing ones as they adapt to the parameters of yor aquarium, a process modulated by the restructuring of endosymbiont communities and the production of photoproective pigments within the tissues of the coral itself. With many aquacultured and even many maricultured corals, one can generally expect any given type of coral to “color up” in a certain way. However, sometimes corals can undergo rather unexpected transformations.
I was scrolling through Instagram, trying to avoid making progress on my the ever growing list of deadlines when I stumbled upon one such coral. Having been in the aquarium hobby for nearly a decade as both a hobbyist and an aquarist at a public aquarium, there are very few corals that I haven’t seen, let alone ones that give me much pause. This one in particular, took my breath away.
The coral in question is a multicolored “grafted” Paragoniastrea australensis (or “Paragon coral” as coined by Jake Adams), with a combination of colors that I have never seen expressed in any species of maze brain coral. Its two-faced appearance formed naturally and not by the product of artificial splicing practices like allografting. But what’s especially unique about this coral is its story.
Most examples of Paragoniastrea australensis exhibit two or three colors that are conserved across the entire colony. Most of the more common aquarium strains feature green coenosarc tissue covering the raised walls of adjacent corallites and a lighter colored oral disks snaking below them. In some instances, the inner walls of the corallites may be partially darked, a trait that I sometime’s unscientifically refer to as the coral’s “eyeliner”
The majority of Paragoniastrea australensis are bicolored. (Image Credit: Sean Ono)
The owner of this coral, @pico_reefer on Instagram, first acquired a frag of this coral from a local hobbyist friend as a rescue piece roughly 5 years ago. The coral he received was just barely hanging on to life, a mere 6 millimeter puddle of mottled tissue smeared across a tiny frag plug. At the time, the coral certainly didn’t look like much, but he was determined to help it recover for the sake of his friend.
Photographs of the mystery coral’s progression during its initial months in @pico_reefer’s tank. (Image Credit: @pico_reefer on Instagram)
Early on, the coral began to exhibit signs that it was something special. Different parts of the coral exhibited completely distinct colors from adjacent sections. One of the challenges that @pico_reefer first faced was the positioning of this coral which would quickly begin to bleach if the lighting was even a little too intense. Consequently, this Paragoniastrea was kept in a sheltered spot within the tank with moderate light and lower flow. Over the years, the frag began to exhibit brighter and brighter colors, adopting the clear division of color that it exhibits today.
The Paragoniastrea as it looks at the time of writing. (Image Credit: @pico_reefer)
The cause of this coral’s kaleidoscopic coloration is unclear. The most logical explanation is that this coral is the product of chimerism. Chimeric corals result from a process by which several newly-spawned conspecific coral larvae settle within very close proximity to each other. As these same-species coral larvae develop and begin to grow, they fuse together into a single colonial individual while retaining their coloration within different sectors of the newly formed colony. This phenomenon has been by Inter-Fish PTY LTD, a Queensland-based coral supplier that is actively involved in coral spawning research, in their captive-spawned Goniopora. It is very likely that @pico_reefer’s Paragoniastrea arose through the very same process.
Let the splendor of this one of a kind Paragoniastrea be a lesson to us all – give the more unsightly mystery frags a chance to thrive, you never know how they might reward you.
