The last few months Vibrant Corals has been bringing in wild Solomon Island Acropora they claim are the same as the original purple monster. In a recent Reef Therapy episode I spoke with Dr. Eli Meyer and Dr. Andrew Bouwma about using DNA technology to test for corals linage.
One potential issue I raised in our conversation was the inability for the test to distinguish between wild and aquacultured corals sourced from the same location. A good example of this would be torch corals. Many of the named torch corals currently in the hobby whether it be the ASD Holy Grail, TCK Master etc likely all came from mariculture racks where torches are grown in mass.
The ASD Holy Grail torch.
Thus, it is likely that many other vendors besides the original companies that named said pieces have brought in polyps from the exact same colonies where the named pieces originated. In short, this means that many vendors may be selling torch corals that are genetically identical to the ASD holy grail without the name or price associated with them.
The only substantive difference between these corals would be how long they have spent in the captive environment and been aquacultured which could overtime affect their phenotype as well as “hardiness”. But on a genotypic level many of the same corals from the same colonies may be floating around.
I proposed a test case to help resolve this potential concern and reveal if the process of aquaculture for several generations was enough to induce a genotypic change in the coral to make “lineaged” pieces distinct genetically. I suggest that we utilize the purple monster Acropora Vibrant Corals and Fish in Irving, Texas, had been importing, and compare them to the original strains of Purple Monster still in captivity with people like Kieth (Reef Bum), Chris Meckley (ACI Aquaculture) and Johnny Shen (Thirsty Reef).
If Vibrant is indeed getting purple monsters from the same location as the original strain this would help elute the limits of Aquabiomics new DNA lineage service they hope to bring to market which could help narrow down use cases for it.
If you’re interested in listening to the podcast, or purchasing a purple monster Acropora from Vibrant Corals you can do both in the respective links below.
https://vibrantcoralsandfish.com
