Tyree Pink Lemonade Acropora

Pink Lemonade is a long-tenured named acro from the Steve Tyree lineage — an Acropora nasuta in electric yellow-green, with polyps that flush pink to purple along the branches. The lemonade name describes the body color honestly: under strong light the colony glows a pale citrus yellow that few other acros match, and the pink polyp contrast does the rest. It has circulated in the hobby long enough to earn a reputation as one of the hardier collector acros, and it remains a benchmark strain for testing whether a tank is truly ready for demanding SPS.

A. nasuta lives on reef crests and upper slopes in the Indo-Pacific, in the brightest, roughest water on the reef. Pink Lemonade keeps best at the top of the aquascape under high light and vigorous, random flow. Its color is a light meter: full sun conditions bring the yellow body and pink polyps, while a shaded placement turns the same frag green-brown within weeks. Chemistry follows the house standard — alkalinity steady at 8–10 dKH, calcium 400–450 ppm, salinity near 35 ppt, temperature 77–79°F — and this strain forgives small lapses better than most named acros once it has encrusted.

Growth is steady, branching, and upright once the base sets. Pink Lemonade encrusts briefly, then sends up crowded branches with the tubular, nose-like corallites that give nasuta its name. Feed it light and clean water; broadcast particulate feeding benefits the tank more than the coral. Fragging is routine — tip cuts heal quickly in good flow — and the strain's long aquaculture history means most frags in circulation come from captive colonies many generations removed from the reef.

Field notes — what keepers report: This is the named acro many keepers recommend as a first step into collector SPS, with the caveat that its color still demands top-shelf light. Keepers running lower light report a healthy green coral and often assume the strain is overhyped, while keepers who move the same frag upward watch it turn yellow within a month or two. Reports agree it handles fragging and shipping better than most tenuis-type strains.

Photo: Paul Muir (CC BY 4.0), via Wikimedia Commons. The photo shows a wild Acropora nasuta colony with damselfish at Aureed, Australia; the Pink Lemonade strain is an aquacultured selection of this species, chosen for the yellow body and pink polyps described above.