TM
|
|
|
TM
|
Route Edition EE
|
|
|
Just like the country of Greece on that weekend, the end of the road had come for Route 66 Marine. At the time of their closure, Reeffarmers had released about 33 Route Editions which were from the fragments we had picked up in March 2015. We still had 7 in house fragments from that trip that were not yet been officially made into LE or EE corals. The End of the Road Acropora is one of those seven corals. We will make three of these 7 corals EE and three of them LE. One may not survive in captivity. It is still holding on though.
The End of the Road Acropora was originally picked out of the extensive Route 66 Marine collection because it had some amazing extended fuzzy tentacles. Its main pigmentation was pink with green tips and multi colored polyps. It lost its nice coloration very quickly when transported to our facility and had just recently begun to color back up at the time of release. We wanted to release this coral within just a few days of the Route 66 Marine closing, so that we have a historical marker for that fateful 4th of July weekend. And the name actually fits the coral.
Each polyp extends an amazingly long and thick fuzzy tentacle as can be seen in the image above. Non extended polyp tentacles are colored red and the polyp centers vary from green to pink. Corallite walls are colored bright pink, while branch stems are colored cream white. That is the strong light and medium current healthy pigmentation pattern, which can be seen in the colony image below. Originally the colony also had green tipped corallite ridges. That green pigment can be seen in the lower base areas of our seed. The green pigment can also be seen in the main axial tip of the branch above where the pink looks a little more goldish. So the End of the Road name actually describes the long extended tentacles or roads coming out of the polyps.
Reeffarmers is currently maintaining a seed section of this coral in a 8 foot Raceway Gyre BiZonal system. The original parent sections of this coral consisted of a base stub and two small fragments. They were not present when the Route 66 Marine facility was forced to cease its operations on July 3rd. We are assuming these were lost in the spring of 2015 when Route 66 Marine had heat and system problems. So the entire living sections of this coral consist of the Reeffarmers seed section and the first edition. That first edition frag was driven from California to west central Texas, then taken to Houston for Reef Currents, then taken to New Orleans for Fragniappe, and then taken to Atlanta/Birmingham for coral shows. All while traveling back to west central Texas each time. The frag lost its color during the process and was still coloring up when we released this coral.
Our system is naturally filtered with a semi-cryptic zone and a reef flat exposed zone. In this captive reef the coral is positioned to receive moderate to strong light and water current. The first edition fragment of this coral was sold in September 2015 at a Leeds Alabama coral show. Recommended list price on July 5th 2015 is $185 for a small fragment.
|
|
