WWC Grizzly Adams

WWC Grizzly Adams is a named Acropora strain from World Wide Corals, carried in the master strain queue with a one-line description: a hairy-polyp "grizzly" mille-type. The WWC prefix names the farm that released and distributes the strain. Keeper records shorten the name to Grizzly Adams, a care-database page files it as Grizzly Adams Acro, and a WWC sale-game guess expands it to WWC Grizzly Adams Acro. The queue files the strain as an Acropora sp., and every source read for this entry files it the same way; the mille-type wording describes long, hairy polyps and a millepora-like look, and no source read assigns the strain a species name.

No origin or release account for this strain was found in the sources read. There is no WWC product page in the current catalog record read this run, no release announcement, and no dated first-sale record. The earliest dated keeper record read is from 2019, when a keeper picked his Grizzly Adams up from WWC in person and tested the shop's water the week he brought it home. By 2024 the name was familiar enough that a keeper offered it as a guess in WWC's own anniversary-sale identification game. The strain's documented history is a keeper-side history — pickup, grow-out, fragging — and the entry presents it that way rather than reconstructing a release story the record does not contain.

The colour record rests on one explicit description. The TankFacts care page for Grizzly Adams Acro describes the strain as predominantly green with blue tips and a white mouth. That three-part description — green body, blue growth tips, pale mouth — is the entry's colour check, and it is recorded at that single source's weight: no second vendor description was found this run to confirm or vary it. The keeper photographs in JPK's build thread carry the strain's look in his system, and his written verdict is about impact rather than hue: the coral looks insane in person, and it may be his new favourite acro in the tank. Colour in Acropora shifts with spectrum, nutrients, and growth state, so a frag that arrives greener, browner, or weaker in its blue than the description should be judged after it settles and grows, against the green-and-blue pattern rather than against a photograph.

The growth-form record is the queue's framing plus one keeper's colony set. The queue calls the strain a hairy-polyp mille-type, which in practice means dense, long polyp extension over a branching millepora-like frame — the shaggy look the Grizzly name plays on. The millepora species-group record describes why keepers prize that look: millies sport long polyps that undulate in the current, and polyp extension is a live health signal, dropping when alkalinity swings or pests irritate the coral. JPK's record shows the strain at three sizes at once in a single system — a frag, a mini colony, and a mother colony photographed together — which documents a keeper propagating the strain from his own colony stock. No source read gives a growth rate, a doubling time, or a colony-size ceiling for this strain, and the entry claims none.

Care follows the Acropora standard. Top Shelf Aquatics frames the genus as the centerpiece group of advanced systems: vibrant colour and dynamic growth in exchange for careful attention and stable conditions. The TankFacts strain page adds the strain-level version of the same warning — a mature tank, stable conditions, and high sensitivity to temperature, sedimentation, chemical and environmental change, with stress and death as the stated cost of sudden change. A keeper should bring a settled SPS system, stable alkalinity above all, and patience through the settling period the genus record describes, where growth can appear stagnant for the first 3–6 months in a new system.

Water chemistry follows the standard reef shape, with the strain page's own tables recorded beside the farm record. 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 TankFacts strain page carries two parameter sets that do not fully agree with each other: its header table gives calcium 380–450 ppm, alkalinity 8–12 dKH, magnesium 1,200–1,400 ppm, nitrate 1–20 ppm, phosphate 0.01–0.10 ppm, and temperature 76–80 °F, while its About text gives calcium 400–450 ppm, alkalinity 3.2–4.5 MEQ/L (about 9.0–12.6 dKH), magnesium 1,350–1,500 ppm, phosphate 0, and temperature 72–78 °F. Both sets are recorded here at that page's weight; the alkalinity disagreement in particular is a reason to follow the steady-alkalinity rule rather than any single table. The keeper nutrient records in the field notes — WWC's own water at pickup, and JPK's system numbers — sit well above the farm table's under-10 nitrate line, and they are filed as the working counterweight: producing farms and successful keeper systems both run this strain at measurable nitrate, with stability as the shared condition.

Light follows the genus record: 200+ PAR for vibrant colour, whiter light encouraging faster growth at less vivid colour, deep blue enhancing colour at slower growth, and a gradual 2–3 week climb at acclimation. The strain page calls for moderate to intense lighting and names low light as a stress condition. The keeper system record puts a frag-tank colony of this strain under about 350 PAR throughout the frag tank, in a mixed Radion, Reef Brite, and T5 rig — a system data point, recorded at system weight, and the closest thing this entry has to a strain PAR record. No vendor PAR window specific to this strain was found, and this entry claims none.

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 strain page calls for strong flow and names slow flow as a stress condition, and the millepora group record agrees at medium to strong. For a long-polyp mille-type, flow has a visible readout: polyps should extend and move in the current, and a colony that stays retracted in a settled, stable system is giving its keeper a flow, pest, or fish-nipping check to run before any parameter change.

Feeding is a supplement with a real but secondary effect. The coral is photosynthetic first. The vendor farm record feeds a phytoplankton blend alongside Benepets, Reef Roids, and various aminos, target-fed gently with pumps off for roughly 10–15 minutes. The strain page recommends nano-zooplankton once a week, warns that larger items such as copepods and artemia nauplii are too large to ingest, and recommends dissolved organics as an addition. The keeper record from JPK's system runs in the same direction: a homemade frozen food mix with powdered coral food and aminos mixed in, fed to the whole system. 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 — the millepora group records sit at the top of the tank — with strong randomized flow and open room on every side. Leave the standard SPS clearance and then some horizontal patience: the one documented colony set for this strain is a mother colony large enough to supply frags and a mini colony at the same time, in a 275-gallon system with a dedicated frag tank attached.

Pests and health checks carry the Acropora list, with one mille-type addition. 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. The group record adds a fish check specific to long-polyp millies: dwarf and pygmy angelfish (Centropyge species) are known polyp-nippers and are high risk around a coral whose appeal is its polyp extension, so retracted polyps in a tank that houses one deserve a nipping investigation alongside the pest check. The strain page's crab caution — most crabs other than commensal acro crabs do poorly around this coral — is recorded in the field notes at that page's weight.

Price anchors: none were found this run, and the entry records that plainly. Searches across vendor pages, keeper sale threads, eBay, and WWC live-sale threads returned no priced listing that names this strain. The documented channels are WWC's own counter and live sales — the 2019 keeper record is an in-person pickup at WWC — and keeper-to-keeper frags from grown colonies, as in JPK's frag-tank record. A database entry without a price ladder is unusual for this program, and the honest record is preferable to a borrowed one: prices for other WWC acros, other mille-types, or the TSA millepora page read for the genus record ($299.99 for a different, named TSA strain) belong to those corals and are excluded here.

Field notes — what keepers report

- The pickup record is UCF Alum's post in Reef2Reef's "Cant get high nitrates down" thread (2019), kept whole because it carries the only WWC-side water record for this strain. Answering a keeper whose nitrates read about 40 ppm, he wrote that 40 is fine, that he runs about 35 nitrate and 0.1 phosphate in a thriving acro tank, that his API and Salifert nitrate tests read the same, and that his acros had never looked better — he was done chasing 2 ppm nitrate and 0.02 phosphate, with steady alkalinity as his rule. His postscript is the strain record: he had tested WWC's water the previous week, when he picked up his Grizzly Adams acro, and it read almost 30 nitrate and 0.08 phosphate. The record shows the strain leaving the farm that named it in water far richer than the under-10 nitrate line in the farm genus table read for this entry, and it shows a keeper choosing that farm's numbers as evidence for his own high-nutrient approach.

- The counterweight in the same thread stays attached. Another keeper answered that at those numbers maintenance is heavier and must be stayed on top of, that there is little reason a system should be unable to run lower numbers, and that in the 40s a keeper will see slower growth for SPS and some corals will never take hold — while agreeing the risk is overhyped and ranking stable pH alongside stable alkalinity. The two positions are filed as they stand: a thriving-acro record at 35 nitrate with steady alkalinity, and a slower-growth warning at the same band, from the same conversation that produced the WWC pickup record.

- The colony record is JPK's 275-gallon garage SPS system on Reef2Reef, the deepest keeper record for this strain read this run. In an update post after switching his display to Radion G6 Pros and removing rockwork for grow-out room, he photographed his frags and colonies and wrote of this strain: here is a frag, a mini colony and my mother colony of the WWC Grizzly Adams — this thing looks insane in person and may be his new favourite acro in the tank. The three-tier set matters beyond the praise: a keeper holding mother colony, mini colony, and frag of one strain at the same time is running that strain as propagating stock, and his chunky frag-tank pieces were noted in the same post as ready to be sold. No growth rate or timeline accompanies the record.

- The system record behind that colony set is documented in the same thread at unusual depth, and the parts that touch this strain's frag tank are recorded here at system weight. JPK's frag tank runs about 350 PAR throughout (his display runs about 600 PAR at the top of the rock structure and 350–400 on the frag racks), lit by Radion G6 XR30 Blues with a Reef Brite XHO strip and four T5s on for the four peak hours. His alkalinity sits around 8–8.5 dKH, held by a calcium reactor doing most of the work during lights-on, kalkwasser dosed at night to flatline pH at an 8.2 floor with peaks of 8.4–8.5, and small two-part fine-tuning (about 40 ml alkalinity and 55 ml calcium per day). His general nutrient band is about 0.1 phosphate and 20 nitrate, with a stated preference for nitrate near 10. He feeds a homemade frozen mix with powdered coral food and aminos, and runs Moonshiners minor and trace elements guided by ICP tests. These are the conditions his Grizzly Adams frag, mini colony, and mother colony grew under, recorded as one keeper's system rather than as strain requirements.

- The colour-and-nutrient follow-up is JPK's February 2025 frag-tank post, kept with its timeline visible. His nitrates had bottomed out from their usual band around 20 to readings around 1, and he began dosing ammonium bicarbonate (40 ml per day into a roughly 200-gallon system) to raise them, reaching readings around 4. In that same period he photographed his frag tank piece by piece — Vivid Confetti improving, Pinky the Bear outgrowing its tile, and his WWC Grizzly Adams among them — and a week later answered a compliment on the set by saying the ammonia dosing seemed to be really bringing out the colours. The Grizzly Adams photograph belongs to the set he was describing, and the record is filed at that strength: a strain photographed in a system whose keeper credits rising available nitrogen for the colour he was seeing across his SPS, with no Grizzly-specific colour claim made by the keeper himself.

- The name-recognition record is WWC's 17th Anniversary Sale game on Reef2Reef (2024), recorded with its outcome intact. WWC staff posted a blurred photograph of a signature WWC coral and offered a mystery frag prize for the first correct identification, two guesses per person per round. A keeper's guess was "Wwc grizzly Adams acro," and staff answered "Incorrect." The record cuts in two directions and both are kept: the name was familiar enough, to a keeper following a WWC sale, to be his guess for a signature coral — and the photograph in that game is documented as a different coral, so nothing about that image describes this strain.

- The TankFacts strain page is filed as a source with its template problem stated, because parts of it are strain-specific and parts are boilerplate that fits Acropora poorly. Its colour line (green with blue tips and a white mouth), its moderate-to-intense light and strong-flow calls, its mature-tank and sudden-change warnings, and its nano-zooplankton feeding line are used in this entry at page weight. Its cautions section, though, claims the coral has no stinging tentacles yet can release digestive strands described with anemone anatomy terms, and calls it specifically aggressive to zoanthids and soft leather corals — a template pattern that conflicts with the peaceful, no-sweeper record Acropora carries across this database's entries, and with the commensal-crab framing in its own crab sentence. Its acclimation section also claims six months to regain normal growth, against the genus record's 3–6 month settling window. Those lines are recorded here so a future editor sees them, and they are given no weight in the entry's temperament, spacing, or settling guidance.

- The silence record is part of this entry's evidence and is kept explicit. No WWC product page for this strain was found in the catalog record read this run; no release or origin account was found; no priced listing naming this strain was found across vendor, sale-thread, eBay, and live-sale searches; no second colour description was found to corroborate the TankFacts line; and no keeper growth-rate, loss, or pest record specific to this strain was found. The entry is therefore shorter on strain-specific claims than most staged Acropora dossiers in this program, by evidence rather than by effort, and future enrichment should start from WWC's own channels and from keepers holding JPK-lineage frags.