new Australian Micromussa...or is it an acan?

[Patwa]

LOL....it's the invasion of the Non-Indo-Australian corals!!

have fun guys.....save up your money and press your LFS to keep the prices FAIR....these aussie mussids will be flooding the US market soon enough.....if you can't afford them now, maybe wait a month or two

Zach

 

[143gadgets]

Hey Randy. Welcome to CZ. Awesome collection you have there.

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Guess I'll be heading over to RandyO's place....to view and drool over his Aussie Acan collection. Maybe I'll snap a few pix as well...(hopefully a Frag or two while I'm over there...LOL!)
BTW Zach .... how's the Fragging comin' along dude?

Paul

 

[RandyO]

Thanks for the warm welcome.

Paul is correct. I am in Buffalo. A short ride to the 2 Canadian stores that brought in the Aussie shipments. I'm planning on taking a ride up there on Saturday.

 

[BigBadZoaDaddy]

I have been asking with no respons, will you be able to bring those back to the US?

 

[Sea MunnKey]

I have been asking with no respons, will you be able to bring those back to the US?

Do I sense "Acan desperation" here...:hammer: !!

BigBadZoaDaddy ..... I was one of the ReefGeek to view the very First Aussie Acan and Duncan shipment at our local LFS and I was Floored!! Colonies after colonies of Sweet and awesome color Acans...oh yes I did Wet my Pants alright!!

Paul

 

[sr71]

I have been asking with no respons, will you be able to bring those back to the US?

Still haven't answer the question. I need to know too cuz I have a free airline ticket to use and Toronto sounds pretty good right now.

what ever happen to reefraft? they haven't update their site in a very loooong time

 

[Acro76]

Technically you should not be able to bring in any CITES listed corals or fish from Canada into the U.S. It all would depend on what customs says about it, and of course whether or not you declare it!

All wildlife trade must go through US Fish & Wildlife, then through customs. But I really don't know how they look upon small business-to-consumer sales such as buying a few corals from a store in canada and bringing them across the border.

I know a wholesaler in Canada and it is much easier for them to import direct than it is for companies here. There is SOOO much red tape to go through to import its not even worth doing unless its big quantites on a regular basis.

 

[Ike]

Here's an article from that other site that I found interesting a while back. In canse any of you missed it, it's a pretty good read.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-08/ebac/index.php

 

[reefboy]

Here's an article from that other site that I found interesting a while back. In canse any of you missed it, it's a pretty good read.

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-08/ebac/index.php

good read.

 

[RandyO]

Some of that article is just plain baloney. JMO.

Not to disrespect the authors, since I have great respect for both of them. Two of my favorites to be precise.

 

[sr71]

thanks for the info folks

 

[Ike]

Some of that article is just plain baloney. JMO.

Not to disrespect the authors, since I have great respect for both of them. Two of my favorites to be precise.

Which parts do you feel are Baloney?

The one thing I totally agree with is the nonsense claims of people about things being rare. I'm sorry, but things like Orange Crush Acan can be had from just about every online vendor with a decent selection yet they're still considered rare and command a high price. Most Micromussa and Acans are the same deal, if it really was rare it wouldn't be so easy to get. Just because it's more diffiocult to get a certain coral into the US legally doesn't make it rare. Duncans are a perfect example of this, they're about as common in Australia as Bubble corals are here in the US, yet many people pay silly amounts for them and consider them rare.

 

[RandyO]

When you here the word "Rare" in the aquarium trade, there can be a few different meanings.

There's Rare in the wild.
Rare in the trade.
And Rare in a particular area.(country/region)


A coral that is rare in the wild can only be determined by people that have survey'd the reefs. I typically go by Jen Veron's opinion on rare in the wild.

Then there's rare in the trade. These are corals that may be abundant in the ocean, but not collected very often.

And then we have Regional Rarities. These are corals like Duncanopsammia that are found only in Australian waters. Up until recently Australia had not released CITES on any live corals. So while you could find a large colony in every Australian LFS, there were none to be found here in the US.


Typically when I hear the word rare thrown around I assume people mean in the aquarium trade. Since there's no real way to survey everyone's corals, it's kind of hard to really know if a coral is rare in the trade.
In my opinion, this is where supply and demand comes in. If there's only a few of these corals to go around, and lots of people are looking for it, one might refer to this coral as rare. It doesn't matter if there's boatloads of them in the wild since that has no barring on the trade.

Plainly put. If you want it but can't find it, it's rare to you. If I've got it in my tank, it's not rare to me. And if I've got it, and 100's of people contact me asking for it, it's probably rare.



So next time you see an ebay auction for a rare neon green Candy coral, it might be rare to someone. Just not you.

 

[RandyO]

So let's address the Orange Crush thing.

At one time there was only one person with an Orange Acanthastrea/Musside looking coral in the US. That was The Captive Reef in PA a few years ago. Pictures of this coral surfaced, and no one had ever seen one like it. He named it Orange Crush and passed frags around. These frags grew into new colonies and were fragged and redistributed around. Eventually more orange wild colonies made there way into the trade. People still kept the Orange crush name for these new corals, since frags were selling for a pretty penny.

Eventually, the trade caught up and these corals became common. But a very nice one can still cost you a pretty penny. You can't blame online vendors for still keeping the rare name attached. It's become a sales tactic but in my opinion it's not hurting anyone. A good salesman could sell ice cubes to an Eskimo. It's the consumers responsibility to be educated on the products they are looking for. Most people research a product before they purchase it. What bothers me more than attaching the word rare to a coral to sell it is to knowingly falsely label a coral something it's not.



I know some people will read my posts and think I'm full of Baloney too, and that's normal. I've heard people say, "How do you know there were no other Orange Crush Acans in the country." And honestly, I can't speak for the country, but from the amount of people that use these boards and all the people they know, and the people they know, No one could provide pic's of an Orange Crush. It was a rare coral in the trade.

 

[RandyO]

Lastly, I'll talk about what I feel is incorrect about the Article "Good Lordhowensis"

Because of the name of the Article, I'm to assume that the authors are talking about Acanthastrea lordhowensis. Not A.echinata or other species of Acanthastrea unless noted.


I'll start with this first line of the Third paragraph.

"In a way I feel perhaps responsible for this recent fascination and concomitant exorbitant price of Acanthastrea. In this thread, I mentioned it was one of my favorite corals."

The thread Eric links to had around 150 views around the time the article was written.
Ironically, Eric says Acanthastrea are rarely seen in the trade.
Quotes from that thread in 2003

"I have Acanthastrea in my tank, but I couldn't tell you which species. I love Acanthastrea. In general, I think I just like corals that I see in the wild but are rarely in the trade"

Next up is this passage from the same paragraph.

"These corals have historically been misidentified by hobbyists and merchants alike. They have been available for decades, often being sold as unobtrusive "meat corals" or "closed brain corals." Most sat for weeks or months in dealer tanks as another of the rather bland, massive corals that looked like all the other brain corals. No one really wanted them, and they sold for around $20-$30 at most stores, completely misidentified"


While I don't doubt that Acanthastrea lordhowensis mistakenly made there way into the US, when a few first started to appear, no one fessed up to owning one. No one really knew what these corals were.
In this 2001 article by E.Borneman, he shows a picture of what he calls an extremely unusual large Blastomussa wellsi.

The definition of Rare

Main Entry: 1rare
Function: adjective
Pronunciation: 'rar, 'rer
Inflected Form(s): rar·er ; rar·est
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin rarus
1 : marked by wide separation of component particles : THIN <rare air>
2 a : marked by unusual quality, merit, or appeal : DISTINCTIVE b : superlative or extreme of its kind


Article can be found here.
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/3/aafeature

An excellent article by the way.


Anyway, getting back on track.

When a picture surfaced on RC of a Japanese tank full of colorful Acanthastrea, people started asking questions. And after many months of searching, only a handful of people showed up with pictures of some of these beauties. If they were as common as Eric had stated, many more people would have had them.

If we do a search on RC for Acanthastrea lordhowensis, you won't find much until 2004.


Well, I've got to hit the hay for now. 4AM here.

I'll have to address the criminal selling ring in the article tomorrow.

 

[Ike]

Thanks for the well thought out and informative responses Randy.

Looking forward to what you have to say about the criminal selling ring. I've always had a fascination for the seedy underworld of reefing. I actually became a part of it unknowingly back when I was in the business. I unknowingly purchased 250 lbs. of Samoan rock (legal at the time) which I later believed to be Hawaiian rock since the importer/distributor was later shut down for illegal collections. I heard that some people did some jailtime as a result of those collections as well.

Gotta run now now but I'll probably have some questions and comments later.

 

[BigBadZoaDaddy]

Nice info thank for the time!

 

[Sea MunnKey]

Randy,

We gotta talk about 'everything' when we meet the next time dude!!

Paul

 

[revhtree]

Great post's Randy! Thanks for taking the time.

PS. How bout uploading some of your sweet stuff to www.lpsgallery.com!!