Show off your Poletti lineage Jawbreakers?

[Sea_Monkey]

Andre/Tdf and Poletti hanging out together.

 

[DIYreefer]

Thanks for the tag! I actually know a bit of the history regarding the Jawbreakers. I wrote an article regarding mushrooms and had insight on the origins of it along with the Tye Dye (the actual original Jawbreaker).

Article here: https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/shrooms-the-latest-hot-trend.91/

But to get to your concern, this came from Kmaintl, who had very close relations to the origins of the Jawbreaker. I assumed that the original Jawbreaker came from a shop in Milpitas, California called Aquatic Gallery. The owner was Dr. Li, just to give context on how his discussion starts:

"What you state is correct. I never disclosed Dr. Li's name nor the first hobbyist that purchased the original mother from Dr. Li because he asked me not to and I respected his wishes. The first hobbyist that owned the Mother Jawbreaker (assumed it was named by Dr. Li as he was first to receive this import around 9 years ago now) was one of my customers who purchase reef equipment and I purchased some corals from him for my other customers. He shall remain nameless until he changes his mind and would like to reveal his identity. He lived in San Jose area and I still remember the month he brought the Mother Jawbreaker home, my jaw dropped when I saw it. So, the name for the mushroom was appropriate.

My colony is shared ownership with my son-in-law's younger brothers and we still have our original 1st daughter that was produced by the original Mother Jawbreaker that now resides with Zack at TDF. Since we've owned the colony for 9 years now, we've kept at least 9 granddaughters with nice amount of green and one of them actually had purple before that tank crash and we lost her. 2 years ago, we split the mother colony among the 3 partners and each has several green polyps in their colony. We still keep a mother colony where we frag out for sales, so we do have frags throughout the year. The zoo location is SF is where our mother colony is located.

The 2nd daughter went to a hobbyist in Sacto area, who sold it 3 years ago when he was relocated to Hawaii. He sold everything before moving. The 3rd daughter is still in the San Jose area and I don't know much about the history behind the 3rd daughter. But as of 3 years ago, the hobbyist that owned the original Mother Jawbreaker said the 3rd owner never dropped a baby, just got very big and happily settled in one place in his tank.

Getting back to history, Rommel made the San Jose hobbyist an offer he couldn't refuse (to this day my San Jose customer regrets letting go of the Mother Jawbreaker) and Rommel flip it and sold to Zack at TDF. My only regret is seeing the original Mother Jawbreaker escape from the West Coast. Zack didn't know that the Jawbreaker already had a name and said that Rommel referred to it as a mystery mushroom, unknown and one of a kind. So, Zack named it Mystery TieDye as that's what the Mother looks like.

There is at least 3 lineages of mushrooms called Jawbreakers and that's what makes it confusing. Unless yours leads back to TDF's Mother, you don't have the one that grows to about 5"-6" across, comes in with green and purple as it matures. The other lineages that came in about 9 years ago only grows to about 2"-2.5" and only red and orange. The lineage that came in about 2 years ago is smooth and small, but has the 3 colors quickly. The newest lineage also faster grower. HTH so, yes, one of Jawbreaker lineage is the same as the Mystery TieDye, not the others. "

It took a bit of digging, but I heard/read somewhere that Mark Poletti found his piece at a LFS, before the whole Jawbreaker deal came to light. His is most likely another strain, and is actually the majority of Jawbreakers available in the hobby to this day.

A new wave of wild Jawbreakers/ Eclectus have been making their wave into the hobby the past few years as well. I'm not sure where Andre found his strain, but it's proven to throw an insane amount of solid green, much different from the regular Poletti strain.

I believe the Jawbreaker you purchased looks more like an "Eclectus" shroom, which is known to have a slight green tint to it.

Here's a photo of an Eclectus online:

Here's the TDF Tye Dye (original Jawbreaker) that I unfortunately lost a few years ago in a crash/ equipment malfunction.

Here's two grown up versions of Mark Polleti's Jawbreaker:

And here is Andre's Ultimate Jawbreaker Colony:

Hopefully this gives you a bit of the background between the different "Jawbreaker" strains going around. :)

That’s so awesome! I have something similar going on with one of my jawbreakers. I actually almost threw away the one with all the green in my picture. At the time, it was a mere 1/8” flesh booger and I had removed the larger polyps from the frag grow out tile around it. Right before removing it from my tank I noticed the little flesh blob and decided to leave it alone to see what would come of it. 2 years or so later, this is it. A couple of months ago I actually removed it, remounted it, along with 5 of the babies that were already showing green to a new tile and the main one has already dropped another nice baby. There’s definitely something different about this particular Jawbreaker than all my others. Even though they all came from the same place. This one just drops nice babies nonstop.

After being remounted on a new tile. A month later and I have this little guy. Cool green streaks already forming :)


Main momma polyp as of a few days ago.