Bennett Yellow Tort

Bennett Yellow Tort is a named tort strain from the Southern California keeper Shawn Bennett, carried in the master strain queue with a one-line description: the yellow form of the tortuosa tort, filed as Acropora tortuosa. Battlecorals' live listing today is a plain page that spells the name "Shawn Bennet Yellow Tort," files the coral as Acropora austera, and describes it in one line: "A staple." (An interim report this run described a fuller Battlecorals page calling the strain an "OG Acro" rooted in early-2000s Southern California reef keeping; that page could not be verified live or in the research pass's final report, and its wording is excluded — see the excluded-records note.) The name circulates in several forms. AquaSD's pages and the Battlecorals page read this run print the full form, Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort; the 2015 Reef2Reef SPS Spotlight on tortuosa identity prints Sean Bennett Yellow Tort, and a Reef2Reef poll ballot and a 2023 identification thread use the Sean spelling too; the keeper pack lists shorten it to SB Yellow Tort and clip it once to Shawn Bennett Yell Tort. The Shawn/Sean spelling split is part of the strain's record — both spellings name the same keeper's yellow tort, and this entry carries both so a search under either spelling lands here.

The species filing needs its debate stated in front, because the queue's tortuosa filing is the hobby's filing and it is a questioned one. The Spotlight article "Mistaken Identity – Acropora tortuosa and Its Imposters" sets out what true A. tortuosa looks like — a South Pacific lagoon species with prostrate, tapered branches, many branchlets, and immersed to long tubular corallites giving a rough, irregular surface — and then names the market torts it doubts: "There are other 'Torts' available in the market, such as the 'Miyagi Tort' or 'Sean Bennett Yellow Tort,' but I question if these are truly the same species. Many display characteristics that are notably different from A. tortuosa, e.g., fused branches," adding that many of these questioned torts resemble A. austera. This entry keeps the tortuosa filing the queue uses, and keeps the challenge attached to it in these notes. The Spotlight article itself claims resemblance only and files the coral nowhere — but Battlecorals' live listing does file it, as Acropora austera, so a keeper meeting this strain in the market today will find both species names in active use, and a keeper comparing a Bennett Yellow Tort colony against the article's description of true tortuosa should expect the fused-branch form the article describes rather than treating that form as proof of a fake. A January 2021 keeper thread adds the practical side of the same problem: a colony its owner had grown from a frag as "lineage shawn bennett yellow tort" drew a flat identification as pink lemonade from another keeper — labels travel with frags, and this strain's label has been wrong in circulation at least once.

Who Bennett is, and where his yellow tort came from, is told two ways in the record. The Garrett version: Austin AquaDome's January 2013 retail story on the Bennett Tort attributes the colony to Steve Garrett of Garrett's Acropolis and reports it named for Bennett, and Garrett's own site — Steve Garrett's Southern California SPS farm (Fullerton; keeping SPS since 1986) — lists its Acropora tortuosa as "Aquacultured by Shawn Bennett," describing a wild colony "discovered at 45 feet" that "changes colors with the seasons," yellow to bright green with bright blue tips in some seasons and all blue at its best. That colour passage describes Garrett's wild tortuosa colony, a species-level record, and this entry fences it there: it shows the tortuosa group carries yellow in its range, and it does not describe Bennett's yellow strain. A 2023 keeper adds a hedged voice in the same direction: "Its one of the oldest Acro's in the hobby... From Garrett's if I am correct." The older keeper version of the lineage is different: in the August 2004 Reef Sanctuary thread about Bennett's blue tort, Sand Dollar passes on that "the Shawn Bennet tort (who got it from Schweb)" — a named keeper chain through Schweb rather than Garrett. Both chains are recorded here at their weights, the Garrett chain on a retailer's story plus Garrett's own site, the Schweb chain as a 2004 keeper's understanding inside a thread that also confused the Bennett, Cali, and ORA torts with each other. A third record ties the namesake to the trade's memory: Reef Builders' July 2015 history of Route 66 Marine records that Eric Caamano, the original Frag Farmer of the early 2000s, was "inheriting a fabulous coral catalog from Shawn Bennett" — the same FragFarmer channel that distributed Bennett's tort frags in 2004, carrying his catalog forward.

The 2004 thread itself is about the blue tort, and the fence between the two Bennett torts matters for everything except the man. Its opening post reports FragFarmer's Eric picking up "the first set of frags of Blue acropora Tortuosas from Shawn Bennett," one of them promised to the poster, "priced fairly" considering the source. A second keeper reports he "was on shawns wait list for 8 months the he stoped shipping." Austin AquaDome's January 2013 "Rare Coral Spotlight: Bennett Tort" tells the same Garrett story for the Bennett Tort name — a colony from Steve Garrett, named for Bennett, "often mislabeled," with frags sold out at the time of writing — and describes blue-to-purple tortuosa colour throughout. What this entry takes from the blue record is the namesake: Shawn Bennett was a Southern California keeper whose tortuosa colonies were a scarce, waited-for frag source by 2004, distributed in part through FragFarmer, and his name was already a lineage word. No source read here gives the yellow form its own release account — no release date and no first-sale record for the yellow colony itself — and the entry records that absence rather than borrowing the blue form's story.

The yellow strain's own documented history is a circulation history that runs to the present day. Its earliest sighting read this run is a keeper roster: the Nano-Reef "40G SPS Masterpiece" journal lists Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort in a long SPS roster heavy with Tyree limited editions and named torts — Tyree Pink Lemonade, a Cookie Monster Tort, a Rainbow Tort — placing the strain in standard named-SPS company in a 40-gallon system (the journal was published March 31, 2008 and updated through 2019; the roster's own date within that span is not stated in the page read). The strain then appears in the Reef2Reef "ORA/Tyree SPS frag 6 pack" lists from the same keeper-sale channel that carried ORA German Blue Polyp — any 6 frags from a long ORA/Tyree roster for $150 plus shipping, with Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort a standing member across the list's updates. Keeper sales price it directly in 2011: $30 for a frag on Reef Central (Southern California pick-up), $60 for a "Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort Frag Colony" (South Jersey), and a Tucson list pairing "yellow tort" at $30 whose naming is ambiguous and is filed as such. A December 2020 Southern California sale list prices "Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort — $40" and, as a separate line, "Yellow Tort — $50." AquaSD sold the strain repeatedly through its September 2020 live sale and carries product pages for it. In March 2018 a Reef2Reef PROP auction lot list names "Bennett Yellow Tort" in full as lot 13. In May 2022 the strain is in a TCK Corals live sale, where the farm's hardiest-acro answer (below) is its most quoted modern record. Battlecorals' live listing today is the $49 "Shawn Bennet" page, out of stock with a notify-me button — the strain never left the market; it simply never acquired a care-database page or a release story.

The colour record is thin, and it is stated plainly so a future enrichment pass knows where to dig. The queue files the strain as the yellow form of the tortuosa tort. Its name says the same. The Spotlight's tortuosa survey notes the group's wide colour range — "There are green, blue, yellow, even pale blue/white and several variants in between" — which places a yellow tort inside the group's known range without describing this strain. One keeper record goes further, and it is the strain's only colour-behaviour account: jda, an experienced keeper writing in February 2018 about the yellow acros in his frag system (his SB Yellow Tort among them, beside Wolverine, Pikachu, and OG Tyree Pink Lemonade), reports they are "more yellow at 400+ PAR and under whiter spectrum. In the frag tank under 10K, they are even more yellow," and that the brightest yellow comes with lower, near-natural-seawater nutrients, while more nutrients make the yellows darker and push them toward green (his suggested range: nitrogen under 1, phosphorus around .01). The counterpoint record is v10king's from July 2015: his Shawn Bennett tort, after repeated Bayer dipping for AEFW, had "stayed brown... it's growing but still not colored up," singled out from his other corals whose colour mostly returned — browning as a dip-stress state with exceptionally slow colour recovery in that one tank. Beyond those two records, no source read this run describes the Bennett Yellow Tort's body, polyps, or tips in words: no vendor description and no care-database colour line exists. Photographs of the strain exist in listings and threads, but a photograph a researcher cannot licence and cannot quote is not a colour description, and this entry does not convert pictures it cannot reproduce into words it cannot source. The colour check for the entry is therefore: yellow, per the queue filing and the name, most intense at high PAR under whiter light and low nutrients per jda, shifting darker and toward green as nutrients rise, and capable of staying brown for months after dip stress per v10king — with polyp colour and tip colour as separate fields explicitly unrecorded, as the entry's first enrichment target.

Care is where this strain's record surprises, because the records that touch it rate it at the forgiving end of a demanding genus — for survival. TCK Corals, answering a keeper with a 10-month-old tank in its May 2, 2022 live-sale thread, offered "some of our hardiest acros that are in the sale" and named Bennett yellow tort first, ahead of Sanjays Grape Concord, TCK Balrog, TSA Bill Murray, OG Oregon Tort, TCK Milli, TCK Biohazard, and RR Marvin the Martian. Keeper v10king's 2015 record points the same way on survival and the opposite way on presentation: his Shawn Bennett tort took repeated Bayer dips with no losses and kept growing, yet stayed brown while his other corals coloured back up. Against those stands the framing record: Top Shelf Aquatics frames Acropora as the centerpiece group of advanced systems and among the most sensitive corals in the hobby, with stability the standing condition, and the Spotlight's tortuosa Quick Stats give the group care medium/difficult, lighting moderate/high, placement middle/top, flow moderate/high, temperature 72–80 °F, alkalinity 7–11 dKH, pH 7.8–8.3, salinity 1.023–1.026. All three records stand in this entry at their weights. The reconciliation a keeper can use: "hardiest" in TCK's list is a claim made inside Acropora, comparing acros to acros, and v10king's tank shows the other half of the bargain — a tort can be hard to kill and slow to please at the same time.

Water chemistry follows the standard reef shape, with the genus table recorded beside it. Reef To Go's standard parameters suit the strain's base: temperature 77–79 °F, salinity near 35 ppt (about 1.024–1.026), alkalinity 8–10 dKH held steady, calcium 400–450 ppm. The vendor genus record read for this entry gives calcium 420–440 ppm, alkalinity 8–9.5 dKH, magnesium 1,300–1,450 ppm, nitrate under 10 ppm, phosphate under 0.10 ppm, temperature 75–80 °F, salinity 1.025–1.026, and pH 8.1–8.4. The Spotlight's group band (alkalinity 7–11 dKH, pH 7.8–8.3, temperature 72–80 °F) is wider on every axis and is recorded as the older group record, not as a target. No keeper parameters for this strain were found in any thread read — a named gap, since the strain circulated for two decades.

Light has one strain-specific keeper record, and it is a colour record as much as a lighting one. Jda's February 2018 account puts his SB Yellow Tort's best yellow at 400+ PAR under a whiter spectrum, "even more yellow" under 10K in his frag tank — a keeper's optimisation point, well above the genus record's floor (200+ PAR for vibrant colour, whiter light at 10K–14K encouraging faster growth at less vivid colour, deep blue at 18K–20K enhancing colour at slower growth, a gradual 2–3 week climb at acclimation). The entry claims the genus range for keeping and records jda's figure as where this strain's colour shows best in his system; no vendor PAR window for the strain survives verification. The 2004 spectrum records (torts deepening under 250-watt 10K XM lamps set high, intense blues under 20K radiums) belong to the blue Bennett tort and its blue contemporaries in that thread, and a yellow coral's response to those spectra cannot be borrowed from a blue coral's record — jda's 10K observation is the yellow strain's own spectrum record, and it happens to rhyme with the era's whiter-light keeping.

Flow follows the genus record: strong, variable, randomized flow from mixed wavemaker types, audited regularly as the branching colony grows and changes the tank's flow dynamics around itself. The Spotlight's fused-branch note for questioned torts gives the flow audit a strain-adjacent reason: a colony whose branches fuse into a denser mass traps detritus at its interior, and crossflow around the lower half plus a weekly turkey-baste are the standing remedies from the genus record.

Feeding is a supplement with a real but secondary effect. The coral is photosynthetic first. The vendor genus record feeds a phytoplankton blend (Tisochrysis, Rhodomonas, Tetraselmis) alongside Benepets, Reef Roids, and various aminos, target-fed gently with pumps off for roughly 10–15 minutes, and notes that nutrient-rich feeding supplies fatty acids and amino acids that support pigmentation, with iron and iodine among the trace elements tied to colour. Nothing in the record ties this strain's colour to a specific food product.

Placement should plan for the colony this frag becomes. Mount the frag securely in the middle-to-upper rockwork where high PAR is reachable — jda's colour record argues for the upper band in a system that can give it 400+ PAR — with strong randomized flow and open room on every side, and leave the standard SPS clearance. The Spotlight's growth-form survey is the planning record: true tortuosa grows prostrate and tapered with many branchlets, while the questioned market torts, this strain's group in that article, tend toward fused branches and a denser mass — the Oregon Tort colony account in the 2004 thread describes the same habit ("branches tend to fuse together and form a solid mass with small branches") for that neighbouring strain. Plan for a dense, fused mass rather than long staghorn branches, and for the interior-shading and base-flow checks that habit requires. No record read this run gives this strain's mature colony size, and the entry claims no size.

Pests and health checks carry the Acropora list. Acropora-eating flatworms and red bugs belong on the inspection checklist for any new frag — the 2004 Bennett thread carries a period record of exactly that era's tort keeping: a keeper's tort "got hit really hard by red bugs," came through an Interceptor treatment, and coloured up more intensely afterwards, a record filed in the field notes at thread weight as a blue-tort record that names the pest pressure this whole tort group lived under. Dips and quarantine are the standing entry routine, and the genus failure order applies — rapid tissue necrosis under stress or instability, bleaching under sudden light or temperature change, stability checked first and one variable changed at a time. No tissue-loss, bleaching, or STN/RTN record naming the yellow strain was found in any thread or listing read — its twenty-year circulation record contains no loss reports at all, a silence the dossier records without converting into a hardiness claim beyond what the sellers themselves print.

Price anchors span keeper lists and two seller channels, and the entry keeps them dated. The modern anchors: Battlecorals' LIVE listing (verified live this run) is the plain "Shawn Bennet Yellow Tort" page at $49.00, out of stock ("Check back soon!"), in its Misc Collectibles category — the strain's current live retail anchor, with no frags available at check time. TCK priced the strain in an earlier sale: its 5th Annual Anniversary Livesale list (November 13–14, 2021) carries "Bennett Yellow Tort $35.00" — a livesale-list price sighted in search this run, filed at that weight. Monterey Bay Coral's SPS collection and Manhattan Aquariums (NY) both list the strain by name with no price captured in the text read. The keeper ladder: December 2010, a Reef Central frag-party list prices "3x Bennett Tort $25" and a "Tiny accident frag of Bennett Tort $10" — the colour word Yellow is absent from that thread's listings, so those figures anchor the Bennett Tort name in the 2010 local keeper market and are claimed for the yellow strain only at that stated weight; 2011, full-named frags at $30 (Southern California pick-up) and a frag colony at $60 (South Jersey), with a Tucson "yellow tort" at $30 filed as ambiguous; December 2020, the Southern California list at $40 for the full name. The pack channel prices the bundle and not the frag: any 6 frags for $150 plus shipping with the strain on the roster. The March 24, 2018 PROP auction names the strain as lot 13 with no result price in the text read. The May 2022 TCK live sale carried the strain, but its frag drops were image-based on the farm's website and no Bennett price appears in that thread's text — the TCK price on record is the November 2021 list's $35. The fuller Battlecorals WYSIWYG prices ($72–$90) and AquaSD prices ($49.99 / $59.99) from the excluded interim report are not used as anchors; they are listed in the excluded-records note only. Species-level and neighbouring-strain prices are excluded by the fences above: Top Shelf Aquatics' Acropora tortuosa species frag at $54.99 and LiveAquaria's California Tort at $59.99 are context for the tort market a keeper shops in, and neither is a price for this strain.

Field notes — what keepers report

- The filing-challenge record is the Reef2Reef SPS Spotlight "Mistaken Identity – Acropora tortuosa and Its Imposters" (published March 17, 2015; updated January 25, 2017; read in full this run). The article defines true A. tortuosa from the Australian Institute of Marine Science record — South Pacific range around Australia, lagoon habitat, prostrate tapered branches with many branchlets and incipient axial corallites, corallites immersed to long and tubular — and states that captive colonies of true tortuosa display a very similar form. It then separates the market: ORA's Oregon Tort and Ice Tort are farmed torts; California Tort is, in the author's opinion, the one that most consistently matches the scientific descriptions; and "Sean Bennett Yellow Tort" is named with Miyagi Tort among the others he questions, on fused branches and an austera resemblance. Its Quick Stats for the group (care medium/difficult; lighting moderate/high; placement middle/top; flow moderate/high; temperature 72–80 °F; alkalinity 7–11 dKH; pH 7.8–8.3; salinity 1.023–1.026) and its summary ("not an easy coral to keep, but it can be one that can keep your interest for many years") are the group record this entry's care sections rest on beside the vendor genus record. The article's colour survey — green, blue, yellow, pale blue/white, and variants between — is the only group-level colour context for a yellow tort found this run.

- The difficulty record has two verified voices pointing in different directions, plus the genus framing. TCK Corals' answer in its May Monday Flash Sale thread (sale May 2, 2022; the exchange read in the thread's page 11 this run) replies to a keeper with a 10-month-old tank asking for beginner acros: "Here is a list of some of our hardiest acros that are in the sale: Bennett yellow tort, Sanjays grape concord, TCK Balrog, TSA Bill Murray, OG Oregon Tort, TCK Milli, TCK Biohazard, RR Marvin the Martian" — a seller's claim in its own sale thread, filed at that weight. Keeper v10king's record (Reef Central, July 23, 2015; read this run) is first-hand and cuts both ways: in his 120-gallon SPS system with a dedicated quarantine, corals took repeated (sometimes triple) Bayer dips for AEFW with no losses and browning that usually reversed — and his Shawn Bennett tort was the named exception on colour, "stayed brown... it's growing but still not colored up," while he held out hope. The two records reconcile on survival and conflict on presentation, which is exactly how the entry's CARE section presents them. (A third voice — a Battlecorals "Difficulty = Easy" page — sits in the excluded interim report and is not counted.)

- The excluded-records note (kept explicit so a future pass does not re-import it): an interim research report this run supplied detailed product-page content for this strain — a Battlecorals WYSIWYG page ("BC Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort," four lettered frags $72–$90, an "OG Acro" blurb, care fields Lighting = Medium 250-350 PAR, Flow = Medium-High, Difficulty = Easy, "one of the hardiest acros in the hobby") and two AquaSD pages ("Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort Acropora," Garrett lineage copy, lighting 250–350 PAR, care Moderate, aquacultured $49.99 sold out, WYSIWYG $59.99, and a Q&A remark "grows pretty fast once established"). The research pass's FINAL report found no vendor product page for this strain at Battlecorals, AquaSD, TSA, or Vivid; live checks the same day returned 404 for the Battlecorals address and zero results for Bennett/Shawn in AquaSD's own site search. The content is therefore excluded from every conclusion in this dossier — care tiles, colour, lineage, growth, and prices are built without it — and it is recorded here, once, so the exclusion is auditable. If those pages ever resurface live, this is the first material to re-verify.

- The colour-behaviour record is keeper jda's posts in the Reef2Reef thread "Yellow acro's turning slightly green! Fine tuning" (February 2018; read this run). Jda keeps SB Yellow Tort alongside Wolverine, Pikachu, and OG Tyree Pink Lemonade and reports the group "more yellow at 400+ PAR and under whiter spectrum. In the frag tank under 10K, they are even more yellow," with the brightest yellow at lower, near-natural-seawater nutrients and a shift darker and toward green as nutrients rise (his suggested range: nitrogen under 1, phosphorus around .01). It is one experienced keeper's system, filed at that weight — and it is the only strain-specific light/spectrum/nutrient record in existence for this coral, which is why the LIGHT tile and the colour check lean on it openly rather than on a vendor window.

- The austera concurrence record is the Reef Central thread "Can I see some Miyagi Torts?" (March 18–19, 2005; read this run). TexasTodd (San Antonio) states of the tort group, "They are all actually A. Austera," and Graham (Los Angeles) agrees: "Many of the tortuosa's are actually A. austera (The becker tort comes to mind, as well as the yellow tort)," adding that A. austera "can greatly vary in shape and coloration depending upon how much light and flow is given." The post says "the yellow tort" without the Bennett name, so it is filed as corroborating context for the filing debate — two named keepers reaching the austera conclusion for yellow torts a decade before the Spotlight article — and not as proof about this strain. The same thread's Miyagi material (the original Miyagi deep purple under Radiums, named for John Nguyen's bonsai-style trimming, the name becoming synonymous with the species regardless of colour) belongs to the Miyagi Tort and is fenced there.

- The catalog-lineage record is Reef Builders' "Route 66 Marine Closes, Leaves Incredible Legacy Corals Behind" (July 6, 2015; read this run): "Route 66's history reaches much deeper in the past with Eric Camaano being the O.G. Frag Farmer in the early 2000s, inheriting a fabulous coral catalog from Shawn Bennett that stretches back even longer." It corroborates the 2004 thread's FragFarmer channel from the trade press side and gives the namesake his documented place in the early-2000s Southern California SPS trade — Bennett's catalog passed to the Frag Farmer, whose operation became Route 66 Marine. It names no yellow tort and is filed as namesake history.

- The Battlecorals record comes in two pages, and the split between them is itself a finding. The LIVE page (loaded and read in full twice this run, the second time on a direct-URL check) is titled "Shawn Bennet Yellow Tort" — the surname with one t — priced at $49.00, headed "Check back soon!" with a "NOTIFY ME WHEN AVAILABLE" button (no AVAILABLE marker in site search, so out of stock), labelled with the species "ACROPORA AUSTERA," categorised under Misc Collectibles, and carrying exactly one line of description: "A staple." No variants, no WYSIWYG options, and no care fields appear on it. The FULLER page from the excluded interim report (title "BC Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort," four WYSIWYG options $72–$90, an "OG Acro" blurb, care fields at 250-350 PAR / Medium-High / Easy) is detailed in the excluded-records note above and is not counted as a Battlecorals record anywhere in this dossier; its URL returned 404 on two direct live checks. The live page is the whole of Battlecorals' verified record for this strain: a $49, out-of-stock, austera-labelled listing with one line of description. No growth rate, frag size, or words-level colour description appears on it; its colour record is its photograph.

- The Garrett record is Garrett's Acropolis itself (Steve Garrett, Fullerton, California; SPS keeper since 1986; site read this run). Garrett's Acropora tortuosa page describes a wild colony discovered at 45 feet whose colour "changes colors with the seasons," "sometimes Yellow to bright green with bright blue tips, very colorful... At its best my Tortuosa is all blue," and lists the coral as "Aquacultured by Shawn Bennett." A Steve Tyree biography page read this run names "Shawn Bennett" among the notable SPS reefers of the early-2000s Southern California scene. The Garrett material corroborates the Garrett–Bennett tortuosa connection from Garrett's own side; its colour words describe the wild colony and are fenced at species level in the NOT-aliases reasoning and the colour section.

- The identification record is the Reef2Reef thread "Shawn Bennett yellow tort?" (April 2023; read in full this run). The buyer had purchased a frag sold under the name from a seller (Snugglies) and found the seller's photograph matched an older hobby photograph; answers: the strain has "no papers or lineage" (OldManHobbler), "its a nice tort regardless"; Battlecorals' owner Scott answered in the thread and directed the buyer to the seller/vendor for lineage on a piece sold under a lineage name; Therman recognised the photograph — "its actually my pic from a few years ago that they are using lol"; and nickm offered "Its one of the oldest Acro's in the hobby. I would think it has been fragged and spread around a lot by now. From Garrett's if I am correct." The thread contains no growth, colour, parameter, or loss information, and the dossier claims none from it. Its durable content is the name's practical state in 2023: widely spread, photograph reuse in listings, lineage resting on seller say-so, and the Garrett attribution repeated by a keeper with a hedge.

- The mislabel record is the Reef2Reef thread "Coral ID — New Acro" (January 2021; read this run). Keeper CHR posted a pinkish colony grown from a frag bought as "lineage shawn bennett yellow tort," mostly asking whether it would eat his clams; a responder identified the pictured coral flatly as pink lemonade, and a second keeper answered the clam question generally (acros are broadly clam-safe). Filed at its weight: one keeper-grown colony carrying this strain's lineage label was called a different coral by another keeper, in a thread where the owner cared about clams rather than the name. Together with the 2023 thread, it is the record behind this entry's caution that the label has been wrong in circulation.

- The namesake record is the Reef Sanctuary thread "BLUE Tortuosa loonies and the above" (published August 5, 2004; updated October 8, 2004; read in full this run), fenced as a BLUE-tort record throughout. Its opening post reports Eric at FragFarmer picking up the first frags of blue Acropora tortuosas from Shawn Bennett, with one promised to the poster and a link to a FragFarmer Bennett frags page (bennettfrags.html, long gone). Keeper posts add: an 8-month wait list that ended when Shawn stopped shipping; Sand Dollar's lineage note, "the Shawn Bennet tort (who got it from Schweb)," beside his confusion that the Cali tort, the Shawn Bennett tort, and the ORA tort might be one and the same; another keeper's impression that "the Bennett was for some reason the Oregon"; and the thread's own call for someone to "start a family tree/lineage of these silly things." The thread's keeping records — torts held high under 250-watt 10K XM lamps and holding blue, deep blues under 20K radiums, a Phishy tort that survived red bugs and shipping damage, ORA torts colouring back from brown — belong to the blue torts named in each post. What this entry takes from the thread is only what is actually about the man and the second lineage claim: Shawn Bennett's tortuosa frags were scarce, waited-for, and distributed through FragFarmer in 2004, and one keeper understood his tort to have come from Schweb. The yellow strain inherits the name; its lineage claims are the Garrett chain and this Schweb chain, recorded side by side.

- The retail-story record is Austin AquaDome's "Rare Coral Spotlight: Bennett Tort" (published January 27, 2013; archived January 28, 2013; read in summary this run). The Austin retailer's story attributes the Bennett Tort to a colony from Steve Garrett, named after Shawn Bennett, notes the tort is "often mislabeled," describes blue-to-purple growth, and reports frags sold out ("SOLDDD"). The story is about the Bennett Tort name in its blue form and is fenced accordingly; its value here is an independent retail telling of the Garrett origin beside Garrett's own site, plus an early "often mislabeled" warning for the name.

- The roster record is the Nano-Reef journal "40G SPS Masterpiece *New Coral Pics*" (published March 31, 2008; page 26 read this run). Its updated coral list carries "Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort" in a roster of named SPS — DE Tabling Acropora Jacquelineae, Karls Candlelight, Sunset Montipora, Steve Tyree 30,000 Leagues Lokani LE, Tyree LE Pink Lemonade Acro, Scot-Ty LE Cookie Monster Tort, a Rainbow Tort Acropora, and dozens more. The roster contributes presence and company: by the journal's span the yellow strain was circulating as a named piece in a serious 40-gallon SPS collection. No parameters, growth notes, or colour words for the strain appear in the page read, and none are claimed.

- The pack record is the Reef2Reef thread "ORA/Tyree SPS frag 6 pack for $150 + shipping" (page 3 read in full this run — the same thread and seller lists used for the ORA German Blue Polyp dossier staged earlier today). Seller Dan's successive lists carry "Shawn Bennett Yellow tort" in full, "SB yellow tort" in the short roster lines, and "Shawn Bennett Yell Tort" in the later full list, always in ORA/Tyree company (ORA Red Planet, ORA German Blue Polyp Acropora, Tyree Pink Lemonade, Strawberry Shortcake, Palmers Blue Millepora, and others), at the pack price of any 6 frags for $150 plus shipping. The lists establish the strain's keeper-to-keeper channel and its era; the pack price is not a frag price.

- The keeper-price records are: the Reef Central archive thread "Dec. 11th FRAG HOLIDAY PARTY!!!" (posts dated December 9, 2010; read in search this run) — Frick's "The large bennett torts" photograph caption, and rromero2's list, "Tiny accident frag of Bennett Tort $10" and "3x Bennett Tort $25," with no colour word in the listings, filed at short-name weight; Reef Central's bennett search results read this run — "Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort $30" (October 2011, Southern California pick-up), "Selling a Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort Frag Colony for $60" (2011, New Egypt, New Jersey), and "yellow tort $30" in a December 2011 Tucson list (name ambiguous, filed as such); and the Reef2Reef Southern California sale thread "Corals for sale (SoCal)" (December 2020; read in search this run) — "Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort — $40" with "Yellow Tort — $50" as a separate line item in the same list.

- The auction record is the Reef2Reef thread "PROP Auction March 24th 2018" (read in search this run). Bidder 223's lot list names "13. Bennett Yellow Tort" between Purple Tip Horrida and Paletta Baby Blue, in a local auction whose other lots start at $1. No result or hammer price for lot 13 appears in the text read, so the record contributes a full-named sighting in a 2018 local auction channel and no price.

- The poll record is the Reef2Reef thread "The Official 'Full Spectrum SPS Stunners' Thread/Database" (page 10 read this run). Its ballot of favourite corals under full-spectrum lighting includes "BC Sean Bennett Yellow Tort" with 0 votes among 39 voters, in a field led by ORA Oregon Tort and ORA Pearlberry. The record is small and is filed at its size: the Battlecorals form of the strain was familiar enough to be balloted in a full-spectrum favourites poll — under the Sean spelling, while Battlecorals' own page uses Shawn — and it drew no votes there.

- The AquaSD sale-thread sighting (interim report this run, not corroborated by the research finals — carried as a sighting only): an interim report described a Reef2Reef "AquaSD — LIVE SALE EXTRAVAGANZA" thread (September 2020) in which Aqua SD dropped multiple Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort frags presented with the colour phrase "deeper yellow tips." The keeper-research final did not cover that thread and a live AquaSD site search returns no Bennett product, so the sighting is recorded here at lowest weight and the colour phrase is NOT used in the entry's colour check. If the thread is re-read and confirmed, "deeper yellow tips" becomes the strain's only seller colour phrase.

- The lookalike fence record is Doc Aquarium's "Yellow Tip Austera Acropora" product page (read in full this run, $20, in stock). Doc describes a coral with "branches of teal, light purple, blue then yellow tips," a fast grower forming thin, open, staghorn-like branching, picked up from Unique Corals around 2015, placed high, with lighting 150–450 PAR, flow medium–high, and care intermediate–advanced. Every word of that belongs to that coral: a multicolour austera whose yellow is a tip colour. A keeper searching "yellow tort" words can land on that page through its URL (which contains "yellow-tortusa"), and its fast-growth and colour words must not migrate into this entry — they are recorded here only to be excluded, in the same way the German Blue Polyp dossier fenced its Montipora namesake.

- The silence record is part of this entry's evidence and is kept explicit. No TankFacts or other care-database page for the strain was found by two independent passes this run. No origin or release account for the yellow form from Bennett himself was found, and no release date exists in the record — the early-2000s era comes from Battlecorals' blurb and the 2004 blue-tort thread, not from a yellow-form account. No words-level colour description beyond yellow and jda's colour-behaviour account was found — no body/polyp/tip colour breakdown exists. No quantified growth-rate record, no colony-size record, and no full keeper parameter set for the strain was found (jda's nutrient figures are colour guidance, not a parameter set); no loss record naming the strain was found either — v10king's record is explicitly a no-loss record with a colour complaint. The strain's whole verified record is: a questioned species filing in a 2015 identity article with a 2005 keeper concurrence behind the austera side and a live austera seller label today, two competing lineage chains (Garrett via AquaDome and Garrett's own site; Schweb via a 2004 keeper post) plus a trade-press catalog inheritance, one seller hardiness claim (TCK, 2022) and one keeper survival-with-browning record (v10king, 2015), one keeper colour-behaviour record (jda, 2018), a 2008 roster line, pack-list membership across the early 2010s, a dated price ladder from $10 accident frags to a live $49 listing with a $35 TCK livesale price in between, a 2018 auction lot line, a 0-vote poll ballot, a 2021 mislabel call, and a 2023 thread about a reused photograph. One interim report's product-page content sits excluded on top of that record, listed in the excluded-records note. The care sections rest on those records plus the genus and tortuosa-group standards, each at its stated weight.