Did my LFS just let me walk out with a Grandmaster Krak for less than $50?

[dtruitt]

Picked this up today. Still recovering from a FW dip. I spent ~$50 all in for three single polyps glued onto one plug. LFS didn't have the tag names on this. Am I crazy or did I just bag the cheapest GMK yet?

Polyp behind looks like a CB yellow canary, too. Polyp on the left is a nice blue, but has yet to open.

 

[Perthegallon]

Sorry but don’t believe that’s a grand master I have a whole colony and not one looks like that. But maybe it was raised under different lighting so I could be wrong. I hope it is this is just my 2 cents

 

[dtruitt]

Sorry but don’t believe that’s a grand master I have a whole colony and not one looks like that. But maybe it was raised under different lighting so I could be wrong

We will see how it opens up / colors up, I suppose. Either way, I paid cheap for a mixed bag of zoas I liked, so I'm quite happy. It looks a lot like the "GMK" I killed last month, but all of these zoas color up and expand so differently depending on the tank.

Thanks for the input!

 

[dtruitt]

Sorry but don’t believe that’s a grand master I have a whole colony and not one looks like that. But maybe it was raised under different lighting so I could be wrong

We will see how it opens up / colors up, I suppose. Either way, I paid cheap for a mixed bag of zoas I liked, so I'm quite happy. It looks a lot like the "GMK" I killed last month, but all of these zoas color up and expand so differently depending on the tank.

Thanks for the input!

 

[PicassoClown04]

It would be epic if it was!! It doesn’t really look like a GMK to me right now, but I’ve had several zoas morph in my tank. In any case, it’s a beautiful Zoa and it sounds like you got a pretty good deal . I’d cut the frag plug apart to separate the polyps so they don’t compete for space in the future

 

[Mike from TN]

Whatever it is, it’s beautiful. You scored on that deal!

 

[ScubaFish802]

Grandmasters have a ton of bright yellow/gold usually right?

 

[Perthegallon]

Grandmasters have a ton of bright yellow/gold usually right?

I’ll post pictures in a second they are always different though

 

[dtruitt]

Grandmasters have a ton of bright yellow/gold usually right?

The lashes on this polyp are that same bright yellow / gold, but they haven't extended enough yet to capture.

This one has the bowtie with the bright blue mouth surrounded by a dark ring, what makes me unsure about the tag is that the outline around the bowtie isn't very well defined, and it's a little bit of a deeper red than the GMK I had.

 

[dtruitt]

Better pic this morning.

I'm looking for comparable morphs, but not finding many so far. Allegedly it's a krak, but the only named "Krak" with the green and yellow I've seen is the GMK.

Sort of resembles a Darth Maul, Flaming Mohican, or Dayglow Volcano, depending on the lighting in the pictures online, but all of those have more well defined speckles and different coloration vs the deep red and fairly defined bowtie on this one.

 

[Adamantium]

To my untrained eye, these don’t look anything like GMKs. GMKs have a ton of yellow and gold in them, making them very bright.

 

[dtruitt]

To my untrained eye, these don’t look anything like GMKs. GMKs have a ton of yellow and gold in them, making them very bright.

Seeing it fully open, I agree.

Any ideas as to what this tag may be, if it's got one?

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Looks nothing like my Gmk, probably a no name Zoa. Why did you kill the Gmk last month?

 

[dtruitt]

Looks nothing like my Gmk, probably a no name Zoa. Why did you kill the Gmk last month?

Truth be told, I don't know what did it in. May have been the acrylic plate I mounted it on leeching chemicals, may have been a neighboring frag melting away, setting off a chain reaction, may have been zoa pox, hard to say.

I did not see evidence of nudis or spiders. There's a huge population of collonista snails in the tank. It's possible there are some sundials in there, but I have not personally seen any snails which are obviously sundials. There are a ton of pods in this tank, perhaps a couple are parasitic.

The GMK did have some obvious signs that pointed to zoa pox, but dips in Furan-2 did not appreciably improve the prognosis.

Whatever it was, the other two frags I mounted on those acrylic sheets for easier fragging down the line also melted around the same time.

I also lost a couple utter chaos frags which I cut 1) slightly too small 2) without an iodine dip and 3) with a razor that probably should have been replaced sooner.

I'm doubtful that the acrylic was an issue, I checked that the material was reef safe but could have been wrong. It seems equally probable that since those frags were on the substrate, conchs may have bulldozed them a few too many times.

TL;DR - I don't know what killed the GMK, but I'm waiting for another nice one to go up around $250pp to roll the dice again.

 

[Jeffcb]

yep

 

[dtruitt]

Overhead shots below. Maybe someone has some tag names for one or more of these polyps? The second polyp looks like a tagged zoa I can't remember the name of. Third polyp is still sulking a little bit, but is starting to come out.

Seeing it like this, I definitely didn't win the GMK lottery.

 

[paintman]

Just make up some fancy name for it and deem it rare and you'll feel like you really did score.

 

[dtruitt]

Just make up some fancy name for it and deem it rare and you'll feel like you really did score.

If I don't see this morph tagged anywhere online, I don't kill it, and there's interest (all big ifs), I'm going to call it Smokin' Krak, and give it a price that hopefully doesn't fit the name too well.

 

[zoaprince]

Am I crazy or did I just bag the cheapest GMK yet?

Yes. that looks nothing like a GMK.

 

[danschoenherr]

Without them opening fully, it is a little early to identify. If I had to at this point, I would say the top pic might be Aphrodite, second pic would be Stratocaster and third pic I don't know. No GMK that I can see, but a good deal if they are what I mentioned.