Strawberry Shortcake (SSC) is a fanciful “designer” name given to Acroporas (and other corals) with a color palette of pink corallites over a green/yellow base.   SSC Acros are usually either Acropora microclados or sometimes Acropora nasuta.  In A.microclados SSCs, the tips are mostly hot pink like the rest of the corallite tips.

Not the “UCA Bada Bing!”  The tri-color Aussie Acropora features bubble-gum pink corallites on top of a fluorescent green base with the growing tips a rich blue pigment.  We’ve seen this tri-color combination before in Acropora nasuta SSCs but no where this intense in coloration.  Note: The “Bada Bing” does not refer to a single extraordinary colony but a whole new variant of Acroporas entering the market.  While we refer to the “Bada Bing” as a SSC variant, Ultra Coral Australia prefers to think of it as simply the UCA Bada Bing.

Below are two photos of the same “Bada Bing.”  The photo on the left is the original image supplied to us by Ultra Coral Australia photographed under Radium 20,000K metal halides.  We color-corrected the photo on the right to shift the white balance away from blue to see what it might look like under more “neutral” lighting conditions, and we have to say the pigments may look even better without the excessive blue.  Either case, the “Bada Bing” is one of the nicest Acros we’ve seen yet.

Frag on!