A colony of big, brown Palythoa is one of the oldest coral colonies I have. Back when I got them, big brown polyps were basically "it" if you wanted Palythoa; going colorful meant going for smaller polyped Zoanthid species. I always liked the plain brown Palys though, because they were big and you can feed them.
Although I was well aware of the expansion of the fancy Zoa side of the hobby in the last 20ish years, I somehow completely missed the more modest proliferation of other Palythoa varieties until quite recently. I have to do everything by mail order these days due to living in the middle of nowhere, which means buying blind a lot, so I was doubtful about what I'd actually get when I ordered some Palythoa that were supposedly blue/purple. Digitally tweaking coral photos to look unrealistically vibrant is rampant online, so it's common that what you get will never look as amazing as the website's photo. But, I am impressed. These new Palythoa actually gotten so vibrant it kind of screws up my phone's ability to handle the blue, and it comes out looking like I'm really bad at photoshop lol. They are really quite extraordinarily blue, but do look less fake in person.
This made me wonder what else was out there for Paly varieties these days...and I was immediatley greeted by a bunch of search results and videos of people getting all hyped up about palytoxin.
Seems that although Palythoa have gotten more diverse in what's readily available, at least one small corner of the hoby has been freaked out by them. Back when I got those brown polyps I was just told "don't lick it" lol which I'm sure is more cavalier than is wise, but back when I got my first colony, it was still very common to handle these things bare handed unless fragging them. Well, nothing makes me want more of something I already like than finding out that some people have gotten weird about it, soooooooo...oops, where did those other big polyps come from...
The far left ones and the sort of light blue-green ones are very new so they have yet to fully color up and are still getting their vibrance back after the shipping stress. The ones on the left are slowly getting in yellows around the edges. Yes I also caved and got a regular Zoa in the middle there too out of curiosity...they're cool when fully open (one of my fish had just bothered them in the pic) but still not as cool to me as their bigger cousins.
Although I was well aware of the expansion of the fancy Zoa side of the hobby in the last 20ish years, I somehow completely missed the more modest proliferation of other Palythoa varieties until quite recently. I have to do everything by mail order these days due to living in the middle of nowhere, which means buying blind a lot, so I was doubtful about what I'd actually get when I ordered some Palythoa that were supposedly blue/purple. Digitally tweaking coral photos to look unrealistically vibrant is rampant online, so it's common that what you get will never look as amazing as the website's photo. But, I am impressed. These new Palythoa actually gotten so vibrant it kind of screws up my phone's ability to handle the blue, and it comes out looking like I'm really bad at photoshop lol. They are really quite extraordinarily blue, but do look less fake in person.
This made me wonder what else was out there for Paly varieties these days...and I was immediatley greeted by a bunch of search results and videos of people getting all hyped up about palytoxin.
Seems that although Palythoa have gotten more diverse in what's readily available, at least one small corner of the hoby has been freaked out by them. Back when I got those brown polyps I was just told "don't lick it" lol which I'm sure is more cavalier than is wise, but back when I got my first colony, it was still very common to handle these things bare handed unless fragging them. Well, nothing makes me want more of something I already like than finding out that some people have gotten weird about it, soooooooo...oops, where did those other big polyps come from...The far left ones and the sort of light blue-green ones are very new so they have yet to fully color up and are still getting their vibrance back after the shipping stress. The ones on the left are slowly getting in yellows around the edges. Yes I also caved and got a regular Zoa in the middle there too out of curiosity...they're cool when fully open (one of my fish had just bothered them in the pic) but still not as cool to me as their bigger cousins.
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