ORA German Blue Polyp

ORA German Blue Polyp is a named Acropora strain from Oceans, Reefs & Aquariums, carried in the master strain queue with a one-line description: green/tan body, German-blue polyps. The ORA prefix names the farm line. Keeper records shorten the name to German Blue Polyp and German Blue Polyp Acro, a February 2012 featured-tank roster prints it as German Blue Polyp Acropora, and the earliest records read this run, from May 2007, call the same ORA piece the "German green/blue acro" and an "ORA Green with blue polyp." The queue files the strain as an Acropora sp., and this entry keeps that filing: no source read here assigns the strain a species name, and the two species words that circulate near it — an austera picture posted by a different keeper in the same old thread, and the tort guesses in a 2021 identification thread — belong to other corals and other conversations.

The name needs one warning in front of everything else, because a second ORA coral carries nearly the same name. ORA German Blue Polyp Digitata is a branching Montipora digitata: golden-yellow to white growth tips and bright blue polyps on the Bulk Reef Supply page, cream with light blue polyps on its TankFacts page, sold today through ordinary retail channels. Search results for "German Blue Polyp" are dominated by that Montipora — its store pages, its care page, its prices — and a keeper who follows those results will buy, price, and care for the wrong coral under the right name. This entry covers the Acropora alone. Every Montipora fact in the research record is fenced into the field notes under its own label, and none of it sets a tile, a colour line, or a price here.

No origin or release account for the Acropora was found in the sources read. There is no ORA product page for it in the farm's current catalogue, no release announcement, and no dated first-sale record. The strain's documented history runs through keeper hands: it is already circulating as an established ORA piece by May 2007, when Reef Central keepers are comparing its colour under two halide wattages; a nano keeper loses a fresh-cut frag of it in April 2009; it appears in a February 2012 featured nano's SPS roster and in a keeper's ORA/Tyree frag pack list from the same era; and by June 2024 a veteran keeper is listing it among corals absent from the hobby, unseen for over 10 years. The strain reads as an early ORA catalogue acro that circulated widely in the halide era and then faded out as the catalogue and the hobby's taste moved on — the records support the circulation and the fading, and they name no dates or decisions from the farm itself.

The colour record agrees across seventeen years, which is rare for a strain this thinly documented. The queue files a green/tan body with German-blue polyps. The 2007 Reef Central record gives the green body under working lights: mott768's ORA piece was dark green under a 250-watt metal halide and green under a 175-watt halide in his second tank. The 2024 record gives the fullest single description: fishguy242 calls it a yellowish green acro with blue to purple polyps, beside a colony photograph he reposted from an older keeper's album (the file name, oragermangreen.jpg, preserves the "German green" half of the strain's early naming). The tan in the queue's line matches the strain's stressed and browned states in the record — a 2010 Reef Central post describes a photograph of a browned-out German Blue Polyp colouring back up with, in the poster's hearsay framing, insane colour during the process — so tan is best read as the body's low state rather than a third colour. The polyps carry the name: blue, deepening toward purple at their strongest, over a green body that deepens with light intensity.

The tank record is a nano record at both ends. Imisky's 30-gallon custom rimless nano, Nano-Reef's February 2012 Featured Reef Aquarium, lists German Blue Polyp Acropora in an SPS roster heavy with named ORA and Tyree pieces — Hawkins Echinata, Ice Tortuosa, Borealis, Birds of Paradise, Oregon Tortuosa, Rose Millepora, Pearl Berry, Tyree Pink Lemonade, Green Slimer, Strawberry Shortcake. The tank's published parameters were salinity 1.026, temperature 77–79 °F, pH 8.0–8.2, calcium 420, alkalinity 8.5–9 dKH, nitrate 0, phosphate about 0.02, with ethanol carbon dosing and weekly 30 percent water changes. That is the strain's one full parameter set, filed at one tank's weight: a small, tightly run, carbon-dosed SPS nano of its era. RyanB's Red Sea Max record from April 2009 runs the other way and is about frag handling rather than water: his ORA German Blue Polyp Acropora frag died within days of receipt, and his own explanation was that the keeper he got it from had received the colony new the same day and cut the frag fresh from it. A fresh cut from a just-arrived colony is a handling failure the genus record predicts for any Acropora, and the entry records it as that — a caution about cutting and moving this coral in one step — rather than as a hardiness verdict on the strain.

Care follows the Acropora standard. Top Shelf Aquatics frames the genus as the centerpiece group of advanced systems and Acropora as among the most sensitive corals in the hobby, with stability as the standing condition: consistent calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium above all, because large fluctuations can be devastating. A keeper who finds this strain today is most likely being offered an old-lineage frag from a surviving colony, and the RyanB record sets the handling rule for that moment — a healed, encrusted frag from a settled colony is the piece to take, and a fresh cut from a newly moved colony is the piece to pass on, whatever the name is worth.

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 Imisky nano's numbers (alkalinity 8.5–9, calcium 420, nitrate 0, phosphate about 0.02 under carbon dosing) sit inside that shape at the low-nutrient end and are recorded as one tank's record rather than as a target — the genus record's nitrate band is a ceiling of 10 ppm, and nothing in the strain's record says it needs a zero-nutrient system.

Light follows the genus record: 200+ PAR for vibrant colour, whiter light (10K–14K) encouraging faster growth at less vivid colour, deep blue (18K–20K) enhancing colour at slower growth, and a gradual 2–3 week climb at acclimation. The strain's one intensity record predates PAR meters in home tanks and speaks in halide wattages: the body ran dark green under 250 watts and plain green under 175 watts in the same keeper's two systems, which supports the working rule that this coral's green deepens as intensity rises. No keeper record read this run reports PAR at this coral, and the entry claims the genus floor while recording the absence of a strain PAR window plainly.

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. No strain-specific flow record was found. The genus record's base-recession caution applies to any branching piece that thickens: dense branching traps detritus at the base, crossflow around the lower half and a weekly turkey-baste are the standing remedies, and pests belong on the checklist whenever a base recedes while the tips look fine — that caution is quoted from the ORA Green Planet page's FAQ, a neighbouring ORA strain's page, at genus weight.

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 a branching colony, not a frag. Mount the frag securely in the middle-to-upper rockwork where high light is reachable, with strong randomized flow and open room on every side, and leave the standard SPS clearance. The Imisky record shows the strain keeping company with the era's standard SPS roster in a 30-gallon system, which says the coral fits ordinary SPS rockwork planning. The record's one growth-form word is "stag" — a keeper's October 2007 frag-swap pickup list carries the piece as "ORA german green with blue polyps stag" — filed at list weight; no record read this run describes its 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, 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. RyanB's 2009 loss is the strain's one named tissue-loss record, and his own account ties it to a same-day fresh cut from a newly arrived colony, so it is filed under handling, where it teaches the most.

Price anchors: none exist for this strain, and the entry records that absence as a finding. No individually priced listing naming the ORA German Blue Polyp Acropora was found in any channel this run — no standing retail page, no live-sale list, no eBay result, no keeper sale with a per-frag figure. The one priced context is a pack: a Reef2Reef keeper's ORA/Tyree SPS pack list offered any 6 frags from a list that included "ORA german Blue polyp acropora" for $150 plus shipping, which prices the pack and not the frag. Every other price attached to this name in search belongs to the Montipora digitata namesake — $40.70 at Bulk Reef Supply (out of stock at crawl), $59.99 at LiveAquaria, $30 for a 1.5–1.75 inch mounted frag in a North Alabama keeper sale, $25 in a 2013 Reef Central list — and all of them are excluded here, because they price a different coral. A keeper pricing a frag of the Acropora today has lineage and the seller's colony photograph to go on, and a decade of absence behind the name; this entry offers no ladder to borrow.

Field notes — what keepers report

- The 2007 colour-and-naming record is the Reef Central thread "rare and/or exotic SPS corals" (archive page 2, posts dated May 10, 2007), read in full. mott768, comparing another keeper's orange acro, writes that it "almost looks like it's in the same family as the German green/blue acro but in orange." In the same exchange, rutz81 names DaddyJax's posted piece "an ORA Green with blue polyp," and mott768 answers with the strain's only intensity comparison: "I have the ORA one under 250w MH and it's dark green, I also have one under 175watt MH and it is green, never saw that color before..." The posts establish three things at thread weight: the strain was already an established ORA piece by 2007, its early name forms put the green body first ("German green/blue," "ORA Green with blue polyp"), and its green deepened with halide intensity in one keeper's two tanks. mpoletti's reply in the same exchange — that DaddyJax's coral looks more like a nasuta by corallite structure — is about DaddyJax's wild colony, not about the ORA piece, and is recorded here only so it is never mistaken for a species call on this strain.

- The 2010 colour-up record sits further down the same Reef Central thread (posts dated May 25, 2010, read on the archive page this run). werdlone identifies a much-discussed photograph for dcook: "I think that picture was of a browned out german blue polyp. It was coloring back up and got some insane color during the process. That is what I was 'told'." The hearsay framing is the keeper's own and the record is filed at that weight — a browned specimen of this strain was remembered, secondhand, as colouring up dramatically. In the same post werdlone separates his own austera picture ("That ereef Austeria i posted was a stolen picture from 250G's post") from the German Blue Polyp photograph, which is why this dossier records austera as a neighbouring picture in the thread and never as this strain's species.

- The loss record is RyanB's nano build thread on Nano-Reef (posts dated April 2009, read in search this run). His coral log for March 29, 2009 adds "ORA Green and German Blue Polyp Acropora," and his April log records that it "recently RTS and died on 4-5-09," with his own explanation attached: "It's possibly the fact that the guy I got it from just got it new in his tank the same day he had gave me a fresh cut frag of it." He closes the entry hoping to get the coral again from the same keeper once it grows in. The record is one frag, one tank, and a keeper-supplied cause, and it is filed at exactly that weight — as the strain's handling caution, not its obituary.

- The 2007–2008 Reef Central cluster record is kept together at thread weight. A frag-swap pickup list dated October 8, 2007 (keeper xinumaster) carries "ORA german green with blue polyps stag" — the record's only growth-form word. A year later the keeper 60Cubed is the strain's most visible holder: in the October 4, 2008 thread for the new ORA Red Planet he writes "The best is still the german green with blue polyps. But this is a close second," an esteem record that places this strain at the top of one collector's ORA ranking in the season Red Planet launched; his December 2008 collection list holds "German green w/blue polyp acro" beside Red Planet, Pearlberry, Bellina, Borealis, and Hawkins. The same October 2008 ORA photo thread carries the name trap inside a single thread: 60Cubed posts the Acropora under "German green w/ blue polyps" while a second keeper, klondike4001, posts a separate photograph captioned "German Blue Polyp Digi" — the Montipora, in the same conversation, under nearly the same words.

- The featured-tank record is Imisky's 30-gallon custom rimless nano, Nano-Reef's Featured Reef Aquarium for February 2012 (read in search this run). German Blue Polyp Acropora appears in the SPS roster beside ORA Hawkins Echinata, ORA Ice Tortuosa, ORA Borealis, ORA Birds of Paradise, ORA Oregon Tortuosa, ORA Rose Millepora, ORA Pearl Berry, Ponape Birdsnest, Tyree 20K Leagues Lokani, Tyree Pink Lemonade, Tyree Lime in the Sky, Green Slimer, and Strawberry Shortcake Acropora. The published system record is salinity 1.026, temperature 77–79 °F, pH 8.0–8.2, calcium 420, alkalinity 8.5–9 dKh, ammonia and nitrite 0, nitrate 0, phosphate about 0.02, ethanol dosing at 1 ml a day, two-part on auto-dosers, and weekly 30 percent water changes. The roster places the strain in the standard named-SPS company of its era, and the parameters are the strain's only full tank record — one nano, one era, filed at that weight.

- The pack record is the Reef2Reef thread "ORA/Tyree SPS frag 6 pack for $150 + shipping" (page 3, read in full this run). The seller's list offers a pack of 6 SPS or zoa frags for $150 plus shipping, and "ORA german Blue polyp acropora" appears in the list among Tyree Pink Lemonade, Strawberry Shortcake, Red Planet, Shawn Bennett Yellow Tort, Palmers Blue Mille, ORA Hawkins, ORA Bird of Paradise, and ORA Plum Crazy. A buyer in the same thread posts photographs of the received frags with the caption "Close up of the German blue polyp acro." The pack prices the bundle and not the frag, so the record contributes channel and company — keeper-to-keeper, in the standard ORA/Tyree collector mix — and no per-frag price.

- The absence record is fishguy242's post in the Reef2Reef thread "Rare Corals/Corals Absent from the Hobby" (thread published June 25, 2024; the post read in full this run). His whole contribution is the strain's name in bold, a reposted colony photograph (file name oragermangreen.jpg, from an older keeper's Photobucket album), and two sentences: "Yellowish green acro with blue to purple polyps. I haven't seen this coral in the hobby for over 10 years." This is the fullest colour description the strain has anywhere and its modern status report in one post, from a veteran keeper in a thread dedicated to vanished corals. The 10-year absence is one keeper's testimony, filed at that weight; the searches this run agree with it in practice, since every current listing under the name belongs to the Montipora.

- The identification-thread record is the Reef2Reef thread "Acro ID - brown frag from closing store" (read in full this run). cocoReefer's unknown frag — clippings from a closing shop's display, brown on arrival, grown for almost a year — outgrew every acro in his tank including his Green Slimer, survived the abandoned shop tank before that, regained green in its base when he raised nutrients, and carried pale blue polyps. vetteguy53081 offered three candidates, "Blue acro, red dragon, german blue polyp acro," and the thread's weight settled elsewhere: SamMule and spsick both landed on the tort group, with spsick's verdict "almost certainly a Miyagi tort." The record shows the name still circulating in 2021 as a lookalike candidate for fast, hardy, blue-polyp branching acros — and it shows the discipline this entry follows: a name offered as a guess in an ID thread is evidence about the name's reputation, and it is not evidence about the frag, whose growth pace and hardiness are therefore not imported into this entry.

- The namesake fence record is kept at full strength because it decides what a searching keeper buys. The Montipora is Montipora digitata, filed by Bulk Reef Supply under "ORA German Blue Polyp Montipora Coral" with Quick Stats of Moderate care, High light, Medium-to-High flow, 1–2 inch purchase size, aquacultured source, and an overview describing a branching Montipora with golden-yellow to white growth tips and bright blue polyps that grows relatively fast and colours best under strong light (page read in full this run; $40.70 in the page's offer data, out of stock). TankFacts carries the same coral as "German Blue Polyp Digitata," coloured cream with light blue polyps, moderate light and moderate flow, middle-or-bottom placement, with its standard two-table parameter set (header table: temperature 76–80 °F, pH 8.1–8.4, alkalinity 8–12 dKH, calcium 380–450, magnesium 1,200–1,400, nitrate 1–20, phosphate 0.01–0.1, salinity 1.023–1.026; About table: calcium 400–450, alkalinity 3.2–4.5 MEQ/L, phosphate 0, magnesium 1,350–1,500, strontium 10, temperature 72–78 °F, salinity 1.024–1.025 — the same disagreeing-tables pattern this program recorded on the Grizzly Adams and RR The Vinh TankFacts pages), and a diet line recommending mysis and brine shrimp that no Acropora record uses. LiveAquaria lists the Digitata at $59.99. Every one of those facts belongs to the Montipora. The overlap that makes the trap work is real — both corals are ORA aquaculture, both are branching SPS, both wear blue polyps over a pale-to-green body — and the separation is just as real: different genus, different growth-tip colour story, different care weight, and a live retail channel on one side against a decade of absence on the other.

- The silence record is part of this entry's evidence and is kept explicit. No ORA product or catalogue page for the Acropora was found on orafarm.com or in any retailer's current catalogue, and the farm's own published SPS survey agrees with the absence: the CORAL Magazine ORA list ("ORA Grown — Farm Hardy SPS," by Vanessa Sommers with ORA images) gives full entries to eleven ORA Acropora and does not include a German Blue Polyp Acropora at all — the name appears in that list only as the Montipora, as the growth-habit comparator for Orange Digitata ("Its growth habit is similar to that of the German Blue Polyp Digitata, but it tends to grow in a more gnarled fashion"); no origin, release, or namesake account was found (nothing in any source read says what "German" refers to — no German facility, importer, or collector is named anywhere in the strain's record, and the dossier claims no explanation); no species assignment was found; no strain-specific PAR figure, growth rate, or colony-size record was found; and no individually priced listing for the Acropora was found in any channel. The keeper record is the whole record for this strain — two halide-era colour posts, one handling loss, one featured-tank roster with full parameters, one pack listing, one ID-thread guess, and one absence report — and the care sections rest on that record plus the general Acropora record, each at its stated weight.