Absolute Corals

Chessmanmark · Sep 17, 2025

This might be a long shot, but does anyone remember Absolute Corals on Route 52?

The owner did a couple of ORA buys for the club at cost as a favor. I bought some ORA clowns at the time. I also got a pair of yellow assessors. One has since passed away but I still have the other one.

I was thinking about this awesome favor tonight as the clowns I got from him have been laying eggs.

I need to get a reef safe tile and maybe I will finally try to hatch some eggs as a winter project.

Linda had a substantial business breeding fish for a while and Ross got a few black clowns to survive.

I mean, how hard could it be, right?

rhdoug · Sep 23, 2025

Congrats to you and your clowns, Mark! Yes I remember AC of course. I also got some yellow assessors too but no longer have them. Well I haven't seen them for several years anyway. I thought I had lost them both but after several months (or years) one of them showed up for a few days then disappeared again.

I have raised several batches of clowns so if you want any tips I would be more than happy to help. The one tip I got was to let the first couple of batches go their own way, apparantly they may not be all that viable in the beginning. My pair usually laid approx every 6 weeks for many years if I remember correctly, so you'll get plenty of opportunities I would think.

Chessmanmark · Sep 23, 2025

Hi Randy,

I wanted a yellow assessor for a long time.
It’s eye candy in pictures, however it stays in the shadows and it’s difficult to see the colors that outline this beautiful fish.

I’ve been thinking about shy fish after I bought an orange spot goby recently and it disappeared for about five days. It tried to crash the burrow of my watchman and pistol shrimp pair. The nice thing was that my shy Royal Gramma is now patrolling the tank out in the open. My sand bed looks much healthier now.

My clowns are laying eggs every two weeks. I’m taking inventory of the equipment and foods I need at this point. I’ve been interested ever since the presentation we had for the club.

How’s your tank these days?
Here’s a picture of it from 2019.

rhdoug · Oct 1, 2025

Thanks for asking Mark. The tank turned 26 this year and is doing well. I did lose my sebae anemone last year, he had a good run of 22 years in the tank. The clowns were lost for a while without their home, but seem to have adjusted although they have stopped spawning. I guess they deserve a break after 19 years of pretty steady spawning. The purple Stylophora you gave me is front and center and has grown into a nice piece, as well as the neon green Psammocora on the left near the sun corals. There are a few other frags from other members from that 2019 meeting which have grown in nicely too.