Limited Edition
Alex's Blue Matrix
Acropora papillare

Reeffarmers first saw the coral in February of 2005 when we took the above colony image. When we returned in April of 2005 Alex had agreed to allow James to make a fragment for Reeffarmers. The fragment originally had some adaptation problems and had gotten stung by another coral in our reefs. Our seed fragment recovered from this and began growing as its encrusting base enlarged (see January 13 2006 image below). For some unknown reason Reeffarmers was experiencing some extensive encrusting growths on many of our farmed Acropora seed corals for awhile. Even some of our staghorns were encrusting heavily. Unfortunately, this corals growth rate seems to be a slow (see June 8th 2006 image below). We have learned that the original parent colony did eventually make it back into Alex's new reef tank, unfortunately this original colony was eventually lost due to a combination of problems. From what we have been told there were only 3 to 4 frags of this coral ever distributed and Reeffarmers may have the only surviving seed fragment. John Susbilla distributed a few of these for Alex and he is checking his records and his stock to see if any other fragments have survived.

Steve Tyree is maintaining a seed farming section of the Blue Matrix coral for Reeffarmers.com in one of his 125 gallon naturally filtered Tri-Zonal Reef Aquarium. In Steve's captive reef the coral is positoned to recieve strong light under a 400 watt 20,000 K Radium Metal Halide. Current price for a fragment of this coral is $130.00. Due to the corals slow growth rates and spectacular qualities.