This is a one of a kind staghorn that was collected in Ponape during 2002 by
Bill Schroer. Bill was collecting for the Ponape exporter at the time and he
hand delivered this coral to Reeffarmers. We may never see this coral exported
from Ponape again. This beautiful thin staghorn has turned out to be very
difficult to keep. Reeffarmers has struggled to keep the Acropora teres alive
and it has only maintained very slow growth. It had never encrusted at its base
(see update below) and it has never developed secondary branches. We are beginning
to distribute trimonthly fragments with the hope that some expert reef aquarist
can not only maintain this coral in captivity, but also stimulate the coral to
eventually thrive in captivity. The A. teres is a smooth thin staghorn with on
overall whitish coloration that can appear blue white at times. Polyps extend during
the day and also have the white blue coloration. We are calling this coral the
'Ponape Wand' because it has a smooth surface and has yet to develop secondary
branches. Verons Corals of the World states that the A. teres is rare.
Steve Tyree is maintaining this coral for reeffarmers.com in a 125 gallon
naturally filtered TriZonal system. In Steve's captive reef the coral is
positoned 19 inches below a 400 watt 20,000 K Radium Metal Halide.
Reeffarmers suspects that this is a strong light coral that prefers weak
to moderate water currents. Basically a lagoon or back reef staghorn. Price
is currently $70 per small sized fragment. The trimonthly limited edition
reservation schedules can be found below. Update October 2005 - Unfortunately
we have only been able to distribute 1 fragment of this coral to date. The reason
is that when Steve was making the first fragment he dropped the entire fragment and
the Ponape Wand broke into 3 tiny sections. After searching for the sections on the
floor for 10 minutes, all 3 were found and were recovered. Steve was hoping to break
the coral in half. Since the fragments were so small, 2 were mounted to a rock and
shipped to our first reservation customer located in Florida. Those two fragments
made it okay and the last time we checked they were however growing only very slowly.
The tiny piece that Reeffarmers kept was remounted and placed in a very safe location.
Unfortunately it did not grow at all for months. During the summer of 2005 the
fragment has started to encrust and expand at its base (see image below). The thick
encrustation is much large then the 1/8 inch sized broken section we have kept for
months. We believe that when we mounted the broken fragment, there was no axial
corallite on the top branch end. Perhaps when an entire colony of A. teres consists
of such a tiny sized fragment without an axial corallite, the coral may seek to
establish a base encrusting growth before elongating branches. Its current growth has
been very slow but we are hoping that the coral will eventually fully adapt to
captivity and begin to grow faster. Note - We had to retire this coral at the end of
the summer of 2006. We had only successfuly distributed one captive grown fragment that
unfortunately died after 4 to 5 months. Our parent fragment did grow a little bit. We
tried to make a fragments of this captive section, but none of the fragments survived
and the parent fragment eventually died. Unfortunately this coral was completely lost.
Acropora teres Reeffarmers Parent Section July 1st 2005
The original tiny branch section can be seen in the upper left
TM
