Our Coral grading system, no more "ULTRA".

Find out why we've been using this system since Dec 2021.

Soldier grade
⭐La Generale grade⭐
🌴El Presidente grade🌴
💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade💎

What they mean and why we use them.

Only the very best!

Just 1% of the corals we buy, and only 0.1% of the corals we pick from make it into 💎El Presidente's Personale Collezione💎!

They are literally the best 1 in 1,000!

Welcome to the crazy new Salty Revolution system for grading corals.

This is being rolled out throughout the web and in store, and will replace Premium and ★ULTRA GRADE★.

Unique to us

We wanted a system unique to us, so that when you see the coral listed as that grade, you know it has been personally inspected and individually graded by me (James).

Handpicked by me

Because of the way this system works a key part of it is that I hand inspect every single coral into the building. The key to the system is I look at all the new corals and pick out a fixed % of them that then get promoted to the next grade. I then sort through the ones that made it through the first round, and pick only the very best to make it through to the next round etc.

Viva La Revolutione!

Each grade has a military or presidential name to tie in with our Revolution theme, and to make it so obviously invented by us anyone trying to copy us would instantly stick out.

And also. . .

Also creating a back story for El Presidente is fun, and also reinforces it to our brand, ensuring no one tries to copy it.

So what are the grades and how do they work?

Starting with only the best.

The first stage happens before they even get to store. We use a wide variety of coral suppliers, and these are chosen for quality rather than price. We only want the best we can get, so even our most basic corals are above the usual standard. Wherever possible we try to mostly only buy corals as soon as possible after a wholesaler gets their delivery.

We then hand pick in person, or, if that’s not possible by video call or photos, to hand pick out only the very best of what is available. This ensures that most of our corals, even the lowest grade ones are in the top 1% to 20% of what the wholesalers get.

First sorting:

Soldier grade

The first thing I do is pick out and promote the very best 25% of the corals in that shipment. It varies a little as some shipments are better than others, but, the rough goal is only the best 25% overall get promoted.

The other 75% are assigned as Soldier grade. This is our standard grade, but, remember that due to hand picking only the very best stock available even Soldier grade is far better than typically seen. As an example out of 64 corals, only 16 get promoted, with the other 48 being Soldier grade. Soldier grade is the best value for money.

Second sorting:

⭐La Generale grade⭐

Now I sort again. The best 25% to make it through the first round are now sorted again, and the best 25% of these now go up another rank.

Out of the 16 that made it through round one only 4 go through to the next round. The other 12 are now La Generale grade. This is the best quality for the price.

It costs more than Soldier grade, but, you are getting the best 25% of the corals available.

Third sorting:

🌴El Presidente grade🌴.

Now it gets tough going! Out of the 4 that have made it this far I select the best two. I then scrutinise those very closely. Sometimes both of those two go through to the next round, but, this is very rare. I will normally pick just one, and sometimes not pick any to go further.

I aim on average to pick just under 1% of the original starting amount to progress further. The 2-4 staying at this grade are assigned El Presidente status, something reserved for only the very best 6% or less.

If You want the very nicest corals around then El Presidente grade ensures something spectacular, this much quality does come at a price though.

The best 25%, of the best 25%, of the best 25%, of the best 1 to 20%!

💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade💎.

El Presidente Personale Collezione, our highest grade! Less than 1% of the corals we buy get this honor, and less than 0.1% of the corals we pick from at the wholesaler get this far.

These are literally the best one in every thousand corals we see. If you want the very finest examples, rarest colour morphs, and truly jaw dropping colour then this is the grade for you.

Bear in mind though that if you want me to part with the very best 1 in 1,000 of all the corals I have seen then many pieces of silver will be needed for even a frag of it!

Why are the better grades so expensive?

There’s three very simple reasons.

1- Buying the very finest corals costs more. This only accounts for the price jump a little, it’s mostly the other two reasons below.
2- Keeping the price high stops one person from buying the whole piece (usually). That way several people get to enjoy having it, and hopefully by distributing it around like this, it makes it more likely someone will still have some in the future and these rare examples become established in many tanks.
3- We are a REVOLUTION! We can hardly call ourselves Revolutionaries if we didn’t redistribute wealth a little. So a large part of the price of the Personale Collezione corals is used to make the average cost of the soldier grade corals lower than they would be to help out people get into coral keeping and keep the prices down at the starting grade. Everytime you buy a Personale Collezione coral you will know that a good chunk of what you paid goes towards helping out those buying the Soldier grade corals, making the hobby more affordable to them.

It’s a bit odd though, right?

Yes, yes it is!

Although at first this might seem like a strange system, well yes, it is. Hopefully you can see why doing it in this way makes it easier for you to know just how special a coral really is.

It prevents anyone else taking our system and using the same grade names and degrading their value.

And it’s kind of fun tbh.

Viva la Revolucion!

More theming graphics

By adding lots of graphics to reinforce the concept it makes it more memorable which helps with branding, and also, it’s fun.

Reefkeeping can sometimes be difficult, and a lot of material published on it tends to be quite serious. However, let’s not forget that at the end of the day it is a hobby, and the point of hobbies is that they should be fun.

While we can’t do much to make Cyano problems fun, or, calculating KH buffer, we can at least add a little silliness here and there to make life a little more fun and a little less boring.