Palythoa ("Beauty and the Beast")

Beauty and the beast Palythoa (20mm Frag plug)

All our Palythoa are rested for at least 1 month prior to shipping, by this time they will be fully attached to the frag plug of their own accord and will most likely have started to grow 'pup' polyps around the base.

Description:

These exploded onto the palythoa and zoanthid market late 2022 as the must have latest morph, commanding ridiculous prices. All frags in the UK came from a single imported colony. There was an ensuing rush, to get hold of a frag of these, In part driven by social media showing photographs of them, sporting colours we had never seen in palys before! We personally paid £160 for a single polyp back then, desperate to see what the fuss was about! Our opinion, they are very unique, however they are also very variable in colouration between aquaria, dependant upon lighting and nutrient levels and those first showcasing photos, when they hit the UK scene were most likely heavily doctored/shot under filters.

They hold a solid place in the ranks of the 'ultra' and special polyps, but in our opinion should be valued closer to the £20 per polyp mark.

These are from the exact same colony you will see for sale elsewhere. If you have seen these online with the hot-pink outer ring and bright yellow centre, chances are you will be dissapointed, Under very high light and low nutrient levels you can get quite close to these colours, but they will never appear as bright as they do in said photographs.

From our experience the most natural colouration of these palys is a baby blue mouth, surrounded by a yellow inner and an outer ring of red-purple. As mentioned colours are extremely variable dependant upon tank conditions. The ones in our photograph were from our frag tank with medium light in the ratio 2/3rd white to 1/3 blue. As with all palys extremely deep blue washes them out.

High light and low nutrient levels makes the red-purple outer ring more pinky and the inner more yellow. Under very high nutrient levels (we had a colony in our high nutrient softie tank) the yellows move more towards a lime green colour and the red outer more of a deep purple.

Size

Average palythoa sized, capable of reaching the size if a 20p piece.

Care

Very easy under normal reef parameters, thrives under most lighting and flow variations. Nutrient levels and lighting play a massive part in overall colouration.

Growth

Moderate

Minimum polyp count per frag

2 polyps