Coral books for diehard coral junkies like ourselves are few and far between, which is why we spend so much time digging through the scientific literature. We frequently come across new discoveries, new species, but occasionally, we come across a…
We tracked down the Purple Monster Acro to its original source
The Purple Monster Acropora is arguably one of the most infamous stony coral strains in the marine aquarium hobby, of all time. This particular strain of deep purple acro is the coral that kickstarted the whole idea of even having some corals that…
Shallow water Acropora globiceps looks like living crystals
We have held a soft spot for Acropora globiceps ever since the beginning of our adventures in reef and stony coral keeping. Acropora globiceps was one of the first acro frags that we ever got and grew, yet this species is…
Acropora monticulosa is the ultimate ‘fractal’ stony coral
Acropora monticulosa is one of our favorite corals out on the reef, it grows to massive sizes and looks more or less like a huge living crystal when you see it in the wild. Due to its massive size and…
Caribbean Coral Reefs used to be made up of fields of coral
The concept of shifting baselines is an important one in reef ecology which basically describes how successive generations of researchers have their own ideas of what constitutes a healthy or a natural reef. Nowhere is this concept more important than…
Top 7 rainbow SPS and Acropora corals
As stated in a previous post on rainbow corals, a plethora of colors are not too difficult to find in the LPS corals of today. It is evident that this is an exciting time to be in the marine aquarium hobby. What…
Fields of Caribbean staghorn corals discovered off Florida coast
In another bit of good news to start off the new year, it was recently announced that a huge field of Caribbean staghorn coral was discovered right off of the coast of South Florida. The Caribbean staghorn coral, Acropora cervicornis, is…
Reefing like it’s 1993: One Acropora becomes three
The following article was originally published in Freshwater and Marine Aquarium Magazine more than 20 years ago and is reproduced here with permission from the author, Tony Vargas. This is surely one of the first articles ever on propagating stony corals.…
Unique observations of the natural habitat of Acropora suharsonoi
As far as cool “mythical” acros go, for us Acropora suharsonoi has always been one of the be-all unique and beautiful small polyp stony corals for the home aquarium. As an SPS lover, getting our hands on this species for the…
Observations on an unknown acropora copepod parasite
We hate discovering coral parasites of any kind in our aquariums but at the very least there’s a modicum of surprise and intrigue when we encounter something new. The last time this happened we were dealing with the unusual Skeleton Erosion…
