TM
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Limited Edition
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The coral was initially located at the retail reef shop The Fish Collection located in Placentia Southern California. Jimmy Tao originally imported the chalice from Australia. Jimmy still maintains the main colony section in his private collection. Art Petit, Steve Tyree and Nick visited The Fish Collection, while on a reef shop tour of Orange County California, just two days before New Years Eve 2011. A small seed section colony of this incredible chalice was located in the upper center section of a Fish Collection main display reef. It was difficult to observe the complete detail of the color patterns within the chalice at that time. The chalice was positioned high and we were observing the chalice almost from a sideways perspective. It was obvious however that there was some very special pigment qualities within this chalice. Art Petit acquired that seed coral and the Petit family decided to name this coral after Natalie Petit. The Natalie's Southern Star Chalice is also named after the Southern Star observation wheel located in Melbourne Australia. That tourist attraction is currently closed, but the star pattern within this chalices corallites, looks similar to the spoke patterns within the Southern Star Observation Wheel.
Steve Tyree is maintaining a seed section of this coral for Reeffarmers.com in a 130 gallon Raceway Gyre BiZonal system. This system is naturally filtered with a semi-cryptic zone and a reef flat exposed zone. In Steve's captive reef the coral is positioned to receive moderate light levels from a 400 watt 20,000 K Radium metal halide. We currently assume moderate to weak light levels and moderate to strong water current are best. The price of this coral per small fragment consisting of a single polyp will be determined by the first edition auction below.