Tips on becoming a designer coral collector

[Proteus]

Originally Posted by thmh

Adding on to what long said..... Also remember to pick someone who you can consistently beat in rock paper scissors! :-)

~Tony

I always use dynamite!

[typezero]

I go for the dragon claw but somewhere in the books, thats cheating

[J_T]

I have witnessed the rock paper scissors... THere was almost tears...

[Kwood]

Originally Posted by J_T

I have witnessed the rock paper scissors... THere was almost tears...

Im guessing the coral was called "Caw Caw Phoenix Flame Formation Falcon Flyer"?

[thmh]

Originally Posted by Kwood

Im guessing the coral was called "Caw Caw Phoenix Flame Formation Falcon Flyer"?

You know how we are always fighting over for Kwood named corals! :-)

~Tony

[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.