Mind Blowing Paly

Mind Blowing Paly is a named large-polyp Palythoa from the collector side of the zoanthid family: a big paly disc carrying a swirled mix of purple and green. The master strain queue files it in one line as a large paly with a psychedelic purple and green swirled disc, and the vendor record fills that line in. Tidal Gardens describes unique palythoas with a glittery blueish face, a splash of bright green-teal around the centre, and long flowing tentacles, sold as frags of two to three polyps. The Reef Farm, meeting the same coral in its greenhouse, records the reaction the name promises: minds kind of blown at first sight, on a paly that is fast growing and super colorful.

The colour record deserves a careful read, because the two vendor descriptions emphasise different ends of the same face. The queue's swirl of purple and green and Tidal Gardens' glittery blue face with a green-teal centre splash describe one pattern seen under different light: a blue-to-purple glitter across the disc, warming to green and teal at the mouth, with the swirl showing where the tones meet. Spectrum moves the balance — blue-heavy light pushes the glitter forward, daylight lets the green centre read stronger — so a buyer should judge a frag by the combined read under light close to neutral: large paly polyps, glittery blue-purple face, green-teal splash at the centre, long tentacles at the rim.

The name has circulated for a long while by named-morph standards. A March 2014 club auction list preserved on Reef Central carries a 20-polyp lot of Mind blowing palys among the donated and consigned lots, in company with the era's staple names. A 20-polyp lot is a colony-sized piece, and its presence on a 2014 club list shows the morph already moving between keepers in quantity years before the current vendor listings. Keeper threads from the years since show the strain still trading under a vendor prefix, CB Mind Blowing Paly, in ordinary frag orders alongside other named zoas and palys.

Size and build follow the Palythoa pattern. Polyps run large for the family, seated in a thick mat that incorporates sand and debris as it spreads, with the slit-form mouth the genus shows in place of the round mouth of a true zoa. That build matters for handling and for placement: a thick, fast-spreading mat covers rock steadily, and the colony's weight of tissue is why the palytoxin guidance in this entry runs at full strength.

Care follows the family pattern, and both vendor records rate the strain easy. Reef To Go's standard reef parameters suit it: temperature 77–79 °F, salinity near 35 ppt (about 1.024–1.026), alkalinity 8–10 dKH held steady, calcium 400–450 ppm, with low but detectable nitrate and phosphate. Family guidance read for this entry adds the working bands: light centred on 50–150 PAR, moderate indirect flow, and nutrients kept detectable so the mat has building material. Palythoa carries no calcium skeleton, so the colony itself makes no dosing demand; stability and steady nutrients do the work.

Light placement should start low and climb slowly. Tidal Gardens' acclimation rule for the family is plain: a new arrival is far more likely to suffer from overexposure than from a dim first week, so the frag begins in lower light and moves up in small steps spaced across weeks. The Reef Farm grows its stock under natural sunlight acclimated to Radion lighting and warns that a pale, unextended first week usually means too much light rather than too little — a useful field check for a keeper dialling in a new frag of this strain.

Flow should be moderate and indirect, at the gentle end of moderate. The Reef Farm lists this strain at Moderate to Low flow, and the family pattern agrees: enough movement to sweep detritus off the mat and keep the spaces between large polyps clean, gentle enough that the long tentacles sway and the polyps stay open. A colony that stays closed through the day is usually reporting flow, light, or a pest before it reports water chemistry.

Feeding is a supplement with a real effect in this genus. The Reef Farm lists No Special Feeding for the strain, and its general feeding note adds that corals fed regularly grow and look better. Family guidance records Palythoa closing on food in a way smaller zoas rarely match, taking fleshy items sized under the polyp and fine particulate blends; a keeper who wants the fast growth this strain is known for can offer fine coral food or a plankton blend once or twice a week, with flow paused briefly so the polyps can capture it.

Placement should plan for the growth record from day one. Put the frag on its own island rock, lower to middle, with the standard 2-inch clearance. A fast mat on main rockwork reaches neighbouring corals on its own schedule, and the keeper reports in the field notes show exactly that arc: a frag placed on display rock with room to take over, then a keeper rethinking the plan a few months later and moving the colony to an isolated rock while its polyps were still on the frag. An island from the start saves that whole job.

Pests deserve a check on any new frag: zoa-eating nudibranchs, spiders and sundial-type snails travel on new material across the family, and a dip plus a close look before placement protects the whole garden. Handling follows the family safety rule at full strength, and this genus sits at the centre of that rule. The Reef Farm heads its listing with the warning that Palythoa are known to pack a punch in the palytoxin department. Gloves and eye protection go on for every handling or fragging session, care is taken around open cuts, the coral is kept away from high heat and boiling water, and hands and tools are washed thoroughly afterwards. No visual check separates a carrying colony from a clean one, so the routine never varies.

Field notes — what keepers report

- The growth record is consistent across every source that mentions speed. The Reef Farm calls the strain fast growing in its listing description. Tidal Gardens records the family pattern, settled colonies multiplying quickly. A Reef2Reef keeper who bought this strain as a CB Mind Blowing Paly reports the frags growing quick a few months after purchase, in a thread opened because that speed, plus reading about palytoxin, changed the placement plan mid-stream. Vendor copy and keeper experience agree here, and the Fast growth tile rests on both.

- The placement lesson in that same thread is the most useful keeper evidence this strain has. The keeper placed two paly frags on main rockwork meaning to let them take over, then reconsidered: the Mind Blowing colony was the easier of the two to move because all of its polyps were still on the frag, while the companion morph had already put half its polyps onto the rock. The reply guidance is practical fragging craft — annoy the polyps closed, make a few quick clean cuts between them with a sharp blade, wear gloves, and clip rock chips away with bone cutters rather than peeling a settled mat.

- The palytoxin discussion around this strain splits in the familiar way, and both sides stay visible. One side treats a fast paly colony as a household risk to manage actively, with carbon running and isolation planned. The other side, voiced across the family threads read this run, holds that colonies sitting undisturbed in a tank are basically harmless, that gloves and common sense cover handling, and that the danger concentrates in cutting, boiling, or scrubbing tissue. This entry takes no side beyond the handling routine in the notes: the toxin is real, the routine is cheap, and keepers land where their households dictate.

- The strain trades as an ordinary line item in keeper orders, which is its own kind of evidence. A Reef2Reef build thread records a first coral order of twelve frags from Top Shelf Aquatics that includes a CB Mind Blowing Paly among named zoas, a goniopora, and a first acro — a new keeper, four months into a fish-only tank, choosing this paly in the first batch. Another build thread lists Mind Blowing Paly in quarantine among a zoa collection of Rastas, Mohawks and Rainbow Infusion. The morph sits comfortably in mixed collector company rather than in a specialist-only tier.

- The price record is short and current at the top end. Tidal Gardens lists the strain at $50.00 for a frag of two to three polyps, out of stock at the time of reading. The Reef Farm lists 3+ polyp frags with no price shown on the read page. The 2014 club auction lot carried 20 polyps at a listed value of 10 in the sheet's opening column, a club-circulation figure from another era of the hobby. No per-polyp collector premium appears anywhere in this strain's record; the $50 multi-polyp frag is the modern anchor.

- The naming record carries one open seam. The master queue files the strain as Palythoa sp., both vendors sell it as a paly, and keeper threads use the CB prefix form — yet the broader family debate read this run warns that many large-polyp "palys" in the trade are large Zoanthus wearing the paly label for convenience, told apart by mat texture and mouth form rather than by size or colour. No source read this run reassigns this strain to Zoanthus, so the entry files Palythoa sp. as sold, and records the debate here so a future identification pass knows the question exists.