Stratosphere Zoa

[anthonymckay]

You see that post is from almost nine years ago right? At one point they were changing hands for $2k.

Seems the prices are coming down on these finally. I picked up a Stratosphere a week ago at a local coral swap. Vendor was selling them for $99/polyp. I got lucky that the one I picked out had 2 little baby polyps forming under the skirt and now a week later I have 3 polyps.

 

[littlebigreef]

Seems the prices are coming down on these finally. I picked up a Stratosphere a week ago at a local coral swap. Vendor was selling them for $99/polyp. I got lucky that the one I picked out had 2 little baby polyps forming under the skirt and now a week later I have 3 polyps.

Strats started popping up in 2014 (perhaps mid- late 2013) and were initially selling for a few hundred dollars pp (comparable to Adonis or Hallucinations). Strats and stratocasters (a catch all name for all the other black/yellow/purple zoas) are collected from the indo region. That initial wave subsided and no more were collected or were collected sparingly/immediately snapped up by vendors.

As is often the case with wild zoas people struggled to get them acclimated to captivity. These are gen 1 specimens being plucked off colonized rocks and broken up into singles or doubles (due to the high price point). As interest grew the price went to an almost unheard of $400pp in 2015/16 further encouraging the 'fragging of frags.' This had a profound deleterious effect on the number of gen 2, 3 that people were successfully aqua culturing. The price climbed from there.

The Indo collection ban went into effect mid 2018. The price climb continued as the number held in the US dwindled. Meanwhile, South East Asian collectors reported them to be good growers once acclimated and were regularly available. By 2019/20 it's making everyone's top list and there's a fair amount of speculation in r2r threads its 'extinct.' Most people have never seen one in real life. In at least one documented case a 2p+ trades hands for $2200.

Enter GMKs with their intial $1200 price point.

2020 - Early spring. Indo reopens. Exporters have been paying attention to price of all the different gold torches and stratospheres. They are initially available to venders as individual maricultured frags in the neighborhood of $1500 landed and cleared.

The varieties of stratocaster strains coming in as colonies (and on pucks) also explodes.

This time dispersed nature of the coral's distribution, the due deference paid to it by few reefers and its holy grail status have all lead to it becoming readily available.

So there you go. Its a success story story come full circle. Let's hope we can one day talk about the resurrection of the Original Krakatoa, Ultimate Chaos, or Snow Owls.