Tips on becoming a designer coral collector

[Reef Pilot]

Yeah, and you think the real experts are going to give away their secrets??!!...

Here's my newbie story. When we bought our last house, I inherited a 10 year old tank full of softies and some LPS. It was also full of aiptasia, nitrates and phosphates.

So first step was get the tank into shape and get my nitrates and phosphates down to near zero. That actually took about 2 years for me. Of course it didn't help that I didn't know anything about SW. Bio pellets with MB7 took care of the nitrates, and GFO for the phosphates. Pearlscales got rid of the aiptasia.

Then I started with easy SPS, and more LPS. First lesson was turn down my Radion LEDs so I didn't bleach and kill the new frags. Growth took off, and after about 6 months or so, started selling frags to pay for more expensive "designer" frags that I had my eye on.

Now am adding more "deeper water" SPS, and learned that they need even more gentle care, especially with dipping.

And BTW, I dip everything, and with most, break off the frags from their plugs, and remount on new ones. Also, I QT some new corals, and give them more than one dip. My biggest fear is getting some of these nasty bugs, like AEFW in my tank. So far, I have been lucky.

So, yeah, now I am on the hunt for designer corals. Have a few now, and they are looking good. But a long time still before they will be ready for fragging. Of course, my first objective is to have a good looking tank. So at this time, I am only fragging as a result of pruning (some accidental) and making room for other corals.

And that's my story,... and I'm sticking to it....

[reefwars]

Here's a few:

Keep eyes on the forumns, collectors are always ready to pull the trigger

Know your coral !! Be up to date on what's hot and what's not , know the values and how to buy , sometimes bulk is better than being quick.

Before taking the financial dive make sure you can care for what you buy, I rarely ever lose zoanthids no matter what the species

Keep an arsenal to trade , sometimes collectors arnt interested in cash so having some sway plays a good role

Be prepared to pay more than you think is fair , designer corals can be costly and market value can be tough to swallow sometimes



Will touch on this later when not on my phone

[windcoast reefs]

Originally Posted by reefwars

Here's a few:

Keep eyes on the forumns, collectors are always ready to pull the trigger

Know your coral !! Be up to date on what's hot and what's not , know the values and how to buy , sometimes bulk is better than being quick.

Before taking the financial dive make sure you can care for what you buy, I rarely ever lose zoanthids no matter what the species

Keep an arsenal to trade , sometimes collectors arnt interested in cash so having some sway plays a good role

Be prepared to pay more than you think is fair , designer corals can be costly and market value can be tough to swallow sometimes



Will touch on this later when not on my phone

That pretty much sums it up for me to!

[Snappy]

For what it's worth all designer corals start out as just another cool coral somebody has until someone names it and it gets marketed as such.

[Kwood]

Originally Posted by Snappy

For what it's worth all designer corals start out as just another cool coral somebody has until someone names it and it gets marketed as such.

Emphasis on cool coral

[PFoster]

If you are looking to get into the super nice sps a lot of it has to do with
a) your ability to keep pieces well coloured
b) having an eye to see beyond what the pieces is now and seeing what it can color up to be assuming of course you have the appropriate mad skills for part a

Here is a good example.
Now the first pic here is a plana we have already had for a bit. But when these first come in the are pretty much entierly white with the slightest hints of green. Sometimes the tips have some purple. sometimes the tips are solid brown. This piece came in, solid brown but the tip now have some purple in them.



This piece arrived on the same order but had much better color on arrival so its been coloring up for the same amount of time, but started better so its looking much better right now. Base have more green, tips are much more purple/blue.



Now this piece is one we have had for a while. This is one that was a "left over" that did now sell, so we just added to our collection and put it to the side to color up for a bit.
Crazy vibrant tips, crazy vibrant base.



I used the same developing specs for all these pics. Basically set the white ballance on the first pic, cropped it and applied the same config to the other pics.

So from the first pic to the last you can see a major difference in both the base color and the color in the tip of the plana. If you find the first piece at that coloration at a store, you could probably expect to pay 1/2 the price compared to the same piece at max coloration.



Here is another piece for you.
This piece always comes in poo brown. We set this one to the side to see what we could do with it.
All these pics are from the same colony. its just starting to color up, so we anticipate amazing color across the whole pieces, but its not there yet.

This is a branch in the center of the colony and what the whole piece looked like on import:


Pretty freakin boring.....


Here is some of the coloration we are starting to get on some of the outer tips





And now we can see the potential in the piece

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by PFoster

And now we can see the potential in the piece

That's nice, but what is it called? To be "designer", doesn't it need a designer name?

I have a few that are transforming into something really nice, but have no clue what they are called...

[PFoster]

Originally Posted by Snappy

For what it's worth all designer corals start out as just another cool coral somebody has until someone names it and it gets marketed as such.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

If a piece comes in and could be one of a kind. Someone hangs onto it and colours it up to amazing colours. Usually this process involves the store, hobbiest, importer or whatever bringing in a great many number of pieces and selecting the absolute best of the best that they have ever seen and culturing that specific piece out.
Grow it out.
Names it.
Now its "designer" or a named coral.

The names really just serve to help people identify a specific coloration or variation of a coral.
If I say a superman monti, everyone here know exactly what I am talking about (although there are technically multiple colour variations depending on where they are from, but thats another storey and when you get into the is that a "true" superman....)

Lineage refers to the origins of a piece. It identifies where it came from and lets you ensure that under the right conditions you have the potential to colour it up to the same colour that another person has had it at.

We have several rainbow tenuis here that we have been playing around with. One specific piece has colored up to gang buster freakin amazing.



But only one of them. The others are ok.... but not like this!

So now we will take this specific piece, grow it out to a large colony and we will have frags of this incredible piece.
We will give it a name like "RW Over The Rainbow Tenuis"
Other people may be able to sell you a rainbow tenuis but it may or may not colour up to look like this (we have been playing around with a ton of these and only ever found 1 that looks like this!)
So you MAY get one that can color up like this, but chances are that unless it has the lineage of being a frag from this colony it may not color up quite like this one.

Thats what makes it a designer acro and that what the lineage refers to.
So when see people posting asking what the lineage is or saying "is that a Steve Tyre double hippy flipper acro" (ok so that may not be the name but still)



But you can still get some really insane, really nice piece without them being a true "designer" piece.

That was what i was trying to point out in my previous post.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by PFoster

But you can still get some really insane, really nice piece without them being a true "designer" piece.

That was what i was trying to point out in my previous post.

That was a very good explanation, and thanks for taking the time.

I guess that is part of the intrigue with keeping SPS. You don't always know what you have, and sometimes can be very pleasantly surprised as they grow out.

[reefermadness]

Thats what makes it a designer acro and that what the lineage refers to.
So when see people posting asking what the lineage is or saying "is that a Steve Tyre double hippy flipper acro" (ok so that may not be the name but still)

Lineage means it came from the exact same imported coral, to assure it is the exact same one, with the same potential for growth, colour, hardiness.

Sometimes there are look a likes and maybe its the same one maybe not. That is the problem as you never know if it is capable of the potential as the lineaged piece.

I always use my palmers blue millepora as an example. I have own at least 2 other blue millepora. Same colour and species as the palmers but even though they grew in close proximity to one another the palmers always out shinned the others. Faster growth, better colour and hardiness.

But you can still get some really insane, really nice piece without them being a true "designer" piece.

That was what i was trying to point out in my previous post.

For sure Patrick and all corals come from the ocean. I will say though that I prefer to know that coral is proven to grow and maintain colour in an aquarium for 6 months +++. Even better if someone else was able to grow it out in captivity as that increases the probablity of other hobbyists doing the same. Not to say a nice coral that is not proven is not a nice coral....of course it is but they can be a bit of a gamble for sure. And with gambling sometimes you lose and sometimes you win.