WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get

This means this is a recent photo of the exact specimen you will receive.

Our unique coral grading system

Generally we mostly only grade soft corals. The reason for this is that most LPS and SPS types already have fairly well defined names for most colours, and so most hobbyists will be familiar with corals such as a Warpaint Scoly for example, and will know it's going to be mostly navy blue and red, and that they are not common and will expect it to have a triple figure price, whereas say a frag of Green Plating Monti is going to be green and not cost much.

However, with most soft corals (apart from maybe Zoas & Palys), many types are either not named, or, the names are not well known. So for the hobbyist this makes it difficult to know which colours are rare and likely to be more expensive, and which ones are commonly available and not cost much.

The problems with names such as "Ultra" and "Rainbow".

Because terms like "Ultra", and "Rainbow" are often misused, with sometimes people claiming almost everything is Ultra we decided to devise our own grading system to make it easier for you to know whether something is commonly available, or extremely rare.

We decided the best way to grade them is to base that on their rarity. However, the problem with that is if we used terms such as "rare", "very rare", etc, then before long everyone might start slapping the word "rare" on everything rendering the word meaningless. 

So to solve that problem we needed a name for each grade that would be unique to us, so that others would not use our names for each grade. This is why our coral grades have very unusual names!

Our 4 grades and how we define which grade they are.

Our first sorting.

First of all the vast majority of our corals I personally hand pick each one, and I'm quite picky.* Usually when I pick corals I'm picking from a large amount of them, and hand pick them to find the best ones. So even our standard grade is generally above average.

*Similar to the man from Del Monte, except I haven't got a cool hat.

Standard/Soldier grade.

Once I've got the corals back to the shop and have time to examine them closely I then pick out the best ones (I aim to select only the best 25% at each sorting). The remaining 75% I consider as Soldier grade, which is our standard default (although being hand picked they're generally above average). So out of every 64 corals I hand pick roughly 48 out of the 64 will be Soldier grade, and only 16 will proceed to the next sorting. Only around 1 in 4 corals will progress to the next level.

⭐La Generale grade⭐ - The best 1 out of every 4 we get.

I then repeat the same process again taking the 16 best ones from the previous sorting, and picking out just 4 from those, and setting them aside. Those 4 then pass to the next sorting, and the other 12 become ⭐La Generale grade⭐. So when you see ⭐La Generale grade⭐ you know that you're getting one of the best, or rarest, 1 in 4 of the corals we get.

🌴El Presidente grade 🌴 - The best 1 out of every 16 we get.

 I know take those 4 that have made it this far out of the 64 I had hand picked, and pick out the best 0-2 of the 4. I rarely pick 2, it's usually 0 or 1. Any I do pick out go on to the next grade, with the rest of the 4 becoming 🌴El Presidente grade🌴. So when you see 🌴El Presidente grade🌴 you know you're getting one of the best, or rarest, 1 in 16 of the corals we get.

💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade 💎 - The best 1 out of every 64 we get.

 Any corals that make it this far then become 💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade💎, which is our highest grade. So when you see 💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade💎 you know you're getting one of the best, or rarest, 1 in 64 of the corals we get. I'm actually pretty picky about handing out this grade to something, so it's probably actually nearer 1 in 100 of the corals we get.

That 1 in 1,000 coral.

Now although above I say 💎El Presidente Personale Collezione grade💎 is the best 1 out of every 64 corals we get, that doesn't take into account that the corals we get are pretty much all hand picked out to start with from a much larger selection at the wholesalers, so actually that 1 in 64 coral is probably the best, or rarest, 1 out of 1,000.

NEW! - Taking it to another level