Fragging - Color shifts

[AndyL]

Hey folks,

After some recent fragging and spreading around of some of the frags, a question arrose...

Fragged my nice beige/red lords, moved some to the sump, some to my 10g and the main colony stayed in the 65. 10g frags shifted color to a gorgeous green/purple; the frags in the sump, turned a putrid brown, and the mother colony stayed the same. I've noticed this corals trait for radical color shifts before; so it wasn't overly surprising.

The question is - I'm going to make a bunch of these frags available, what would the consensus be on forwarning people of this color-shifting trait? Is it enough to simply show some of the variance, with a note that its color is very dependant on lighting?

I know this 'trait' is relatively common in SPS etc - but more often than not the colors stay roughly the same, the shifts on this lord I find to be quite radical, and I know I'd be ****ed if I bought a beautiful green/purple lord which promptly turned brown on me

What do you guys think?

[Snappy]

Originally Posted by AndyL

Hey folks,

After some recent fragging and spreading around of some of the frags, a question arrose...

Fragged my nice beige/red lords, moved some to the sump, some to my 10g and the main colony stayed in the 65. 10g frags shifted color to a gorgeous green/purple; the frags in the sump, turned a putrid brown, and the mother colony stayed the same. I've noticed this corals trait for radical color shifts before; so it wasn't overly surprising.

The question is - I'm going to make a bunch of these frags available, what would the consensus be on forwarning people of this color-shifting trait? Is it enough to simply show some of the variance, with a note that its color is very dependant on lighting?

I know this 'trait' is relatively common in SPS etc - but more often than not the colors stay roughly the same, the shifts on this lord I find to be quite radical, and I know I'd be ****ed if I bought a beautiful green/purple lord which promptly turned brown on me

What do you guys think?

Andy it is refferred to as reticulate evolution and can even happen when you move pieces from the same mother colony around to different spots in the same tank. Stoney corals are pretty darn cool and predictably unpredictable.