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11-27-2013 11:54 PM |
first, wow. Your tank is gorgeous.
second, 'sp' is common biological shorthand for 'species'. Acropora is the genus that a good number of our SPS fall in to, the other major genus represented in SPS tanks is Montipora.
For example, 'Bonsai' generally refers to Acropora valida, 'millies' are all various colour morphs of Acropora millepora, Oregon tort is Acropora tortuosa, and I think 'Pink Lemonade' is Acropora nasuta (but don't quote me)
On the other hand, a 'Monti cap' is Montipora capricornis, and all 'digies' (green digi, red digi, etc.) are Montipora digitata
If someone doesn't know the exact species (and this is true in pretty much the entire world of biology), they'll state the genus followed by 'sp.', so 'Acropora sp.' potentially refers to all 149 described species of Acropora, which is why you got such varied results when you searched that term.
In your photos, the overwhelming majority of species are in the Acropora genus, likely several being different colour morphs of the same species, though you've got at least one from the Seriatophora genus (birds nest), a couple Montiporas, and what might be a Stylophora or a Pocillopora, then your LPS.
I do a lot of work out in the grasslands doing vegetation assessments, the entire family of blue grasses (genus Poa), of which Kentucky blue grass (the main component of most Canadian lawns) are incredibly difficult to identify to the species level because there's so bloody many of them and vegetatively they all look the same. The reports we produce almost always list the Poas we find as 'Poa sp.' because we just can't tell what it is with any more specificity than that.
Finally, the common names that you know, like 'Pink lemonade' or 'Strawberry shortcake' are pretty meaningless from a biological point of view. Within a single coral species, colour morphs are HIGHLY variable. The original 'Pink lemonade' coral that everyone is so hot and bothered over and in so many people's tanks are all clonal descendants from a single wild colony that very well may have been completely unique in its coloration for its species. That species likely has dozens (perhaps hundreds) of other colour morphs in people's aquariums, and perhaps thousands or hundreds of thousands of other possible colour morphs still out in the ocean. That one morph from that one colony only has a 'common' name because it happened to be particularly beautiful, and someone at the original coral farm where it turned up had good marketing sense. This is true for all 'named' corals.
That's why I think Kien was only half joking when he suggested you name it. All the famous named corals (red planet, Oregon tort, pink lemonade, etc. etc.) were just random wild caught specimens until someone gave them a name and started selling them, which means that the overwhelming majority of corals you buy or see in people's tanks don't really have 'names' beyond their genus & species (which tell you very little about how pretty a coral will be). If yours is not a direct frag of some mother colony that is already named and out there in circulation (and most corals aren't), and it developed in to a particularly beautiful and desirable specimen, you could name it whatever you want and start selling it.
Who knows, maybe in 10 years people could be coveting 100 dollar frags of 'Reef Pilot's Green Popsicle'.
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