I’ll Have A Pink Lemonade Please

Who doesn’t love the crazy color combinations in Acroporas? We have the dual colored Acros, the tricolors, and even the quads. But sometimes a simple contrast between three colors is truly remarkable and surreal. Case in point, the Pink Lemonade Acropora nasuta.

How does Mother nature figure out to color this nasuta with yellow, green and pink?

photo by ct vol on Reef Central

The story of this coral comes from reeffarmers.com (Steve Tyree):

This Acropora is an exotic coral with brilliantly colored pink polyps that extend during the day. The main branch stems are colored bright lime green. One of the tentacles in each polyp will super extend and this gives the thin branching Acropora a hairy pink appearance. The coral also has some purplish/blue pigments that can appear in the base or on branches. Reeffarmers acquired our fragment from Hugo Zuniga (snipersps). The coral has a very interesting captive history. Hugo acquired his fragment in late 2003 from John Susbilla (Tubs). John had been growing his captive grown fragments from an imported colony that he probably acquired back in the late 1990′s. John was calling the coral Lime Green Acro and a few fragments were distributed. Unfortunately it appeared that everyone lost the coral for a time except for Alex (Reefer on a Budget) who had acquired an early fragment from Tubs. Alex then distributed fragments to Tubs, Mingwei and Joleen of Atlantis Aquarium. Hugo acquired an Alex fragment through Tubs. Early on this coral had interesting but not spectacular coloration. Alex believes that under 10,000 K the coral was more of a yellow with orange brown polyps and a purplish growth edge. He then noticed that when Rob Zayan placed a fragment under 20,000 K halides the true spectacular pigment morphs developed. Eventually Hugo’s fragment grew into a colony and through Tubs a fragment from Hugo was sold on Ebay for $550.00 . Tubs decided to change the name to Pink Lemonade Acropora for marketing purposes. Atlantis Aquarium began calling the coral ‘Shades of Fall’. A second Ebay sale of the coral went for $400.00 . It now looks like both Reeffarmers and Atlantis are going to use the name ‘Pink Lemonade Acropora’. The coral grows slowly and it has not been widely distributed. Hugo believes he only distributed about 10 fragments before his colony was recently lost in an accident. It also turns out that John Susbilla acquired his original Lime Green Acropora from Steve Tyree (owner/operator of Reeffarmers) many years ago. Steve remembers handling a few of these Acropora species morphs and he currently believes the coral was originally exported from the Solomons. Only a few ever came in and it was a very delicate to ship colony. Only tiny colonies of frag colonies made it alive from the Solomons. Steve sold the coral to John Susbilla (Tubs) back before John started his online company. John was a collector of exotic stonies back then and at that time Steve was one of only a few people who specialized in handling stonies. Steve has not seen this coral morph imported since the Solomons experienced a civil war.

This coral comes with a steep price-tag. A lot of US online vendors sell 1/2″ specimens at a minimum of 60$, upwards to 120$ for a 1″ frag. Fortunately for Canadian reefers, we at Fragd.it have acquired this coral and will have fragments up for sale within a few months. Stay tuned here for all the latest.