“Have you seen my signature gold dragon’s eye merlin’s chalice of wrath?” Nope this isn’t a game of Dungeons and Dragons, or a World of Warcraft convention. It’s the reef aquarium hobby. Years ago, if you stepped into a coral shop, or onto an online forum muttering those words, people would have either thought you were drunk or very confused. Fast forward and arrive at the same forum or shop today, and don’t be surprised if some chopped up phrases like the one above are flying around. It’s coral naming, and today it seems as though the scientific names of corals are long forgotten, lost in a haze of cool rhymes that seemed to emerge from the mind of a 12 year old hipster. Despite my tone, I don’t hate naming. When I entered the hobby we hadn’t gotten that creative. A colorful scoly was often called a red or orange doughnut coral. Did I mention that back then, it also cost 40 bucks. Coral naming lets people be creative with their livestock, and now and again a name sticks, and travels through the hobby like the avian flu. There is something that bothers me though, it’s that often attached to that swell signature name, is a jaw dropping price tag. So should a coral with a cool name cost more than the old doughnut coral of yesteryear? More importantly, how did naming begin and is it helping, hurting or having little effect on the hobby and industry as a whole? 
Coral wholesalers are called such because they have to sell everything. That means that among the angel’s eye zoos and Jurassic purple people eaters, there are old standbys like green star polyps, garden-variety leather corals and a host of others. To make sure everything finds a home in a retailer, wholesalers often throw in a few choice pieces with the bread and butter stuff. I remember a time at my local fish shop, when a real stand out coral piece was sold for five dollars more than the bland stuff. It didn’t last long, and often I would help the store’s owner un-package his new stock, for first dibs on anything exciting. As the reef keeping hobby gained solid footing, more and more people wanted exclusively unique corals. Suddenly retailers learned the reality of capitalism consumers wish they would ignore; to some these pieces were worth a lot of money.… More:
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