DIYreefer
Well-Known Member
Hi everyone,
About a year ago I bought some frags from a member here which included a "Pearlberry". Now I know that this coral is fairly hard to come by these days so I was skeptical of its validity. While it has always been a nice coral, I've never believed it to be a legit Pearlberry, until now. About 2 months ago I changed up my lighting a bit and this coral has morphed quite a bit. And as it did so, I started to think that it did in fact, look like the Pearlberry that I once had many years ago. So I did some searching through old tank threads and my photo bucket account and was fortunate enough to find one of my old pictures of a definitive ORA Pearlberry that I bought from my LFS (which closed years ago). Although the picture quality of the old frag isn't all that great, there is no doubting the fact that it is a real Pearlberry. As it is on the notoriously PITA, ORA frag plug.
And here is what I have today. The growth form and coloring are both very similar to the original. Which is no surprise, now that my lighting is a closer representation of what I was running back then as well.
The colony in the picture above was basically all green w/ blue tips under my old lighting that consisted of LED/T5. Now that it is under the same lighting, with the addition of 250w metal halides, the colony has lightened up a bit and started to display the trademark pearlesence (which is basically impossible to catch on camera... at least for me) that made the ORA Pearlberry so sought after in the first place.
So what do you guys think? Is it the real deal or no?
About a year ago I bought some frags from a member here which included a "Pearlberry". Now I know that this coral is fairly hard to come by these days so I was skeptical of its validity. While it has always been a nice coral, I've never believed it to be a legit Pearlberry, until now. About 2 months ago I changed up my lighting a bit and this coral has morphed quite a bit. And as it did so, I started to think that it did in fact, look like the Pearlberry that I once had many years ago. So I did some searching through old tank threads and my photo bucket account and was fortunate enough to find one of my old pictures of a definitive ORA Pearlberry that I bought from my LFS (which closed years ago). Although the picture quality of the old frag isn't all that great, there is no doubting the fact that it is a real Pearlberry. As it is on the notoriously PITA, ORA frag plug.
And here is what I have today. The growth form and coloring are both very similar to the original. Which is no surprise, now that my lighting is a closer representation of what I was running back then as well.
The colony in the picture above was basically all green w/ blue tips under my old lighting that consisted of LED/T5. Now that it is under the same lighting, with the addition of 250w metal halides, the colony has lightened up a bit and started to display the trademark pearlesence (which is basically impossible to catch on camera... at least for me) that made the ORA Pearlberry so sought after in the first place.
So what do you guys think? Is it the real deal or no?
Still a beautiful piece 
