ricordia/ricordia yuma

Excellent post....Karma to you.

 

I have to put my 2 sense in on this topic.... When shopping for Rics, ALWAYS check the spelling of it. Ricordia, is Ricordia Yuma, Ricordea, is Ricordea Florida. I can get you any color you want in the Ricordea Florida variety, it will not be cheap because they do have a minimal order when you order from them, and the rarer the Ric, the more expensive it is. They harvested a buttload of them before they tightened the laws on collecting, and now they propagate them. Check out Kiki's website, Ricordeas.net be sure to check out her gallery of what she has for sale. The colors are amazing!

 

o0o she has a special going on now, no minimal orders!!!!

 

I'm not quite sure how this post was meant, so forgive me if it was in jest.

I can assure you that the way the vendor spells the coral, has no bearing on what it is. Ricordea florida is ricordea florida and Ricordea yuma is ricordea yuma. They are both Ricordea sp. One is not spelled any different than the other. Not like cents and sense which have two different meanings.

Also, I'd be a little leary of the site you mentioned. First off, $45 for one single polyp of "true" (what the hell does that mean anyway, the ricordea florida collected from Haiti are fake ricordea florida? What are they really then?) If I am going to pay that much more for something that can often be found for much more than half of that price I'd want a little more information at hand. The album doesn't even work. If by "true" they are saying the coral was truly collected in Florida waters, then I think there's some legal issues with that.

I would also suggest doing a little more investigating in the company and their legal woes/collecting practices before blindly throwing money at them.

Again, Ricordea florida is ricordea florida. Where it's collected doesn't make one "truer" than another. That's like saying a Labrador Retriever, Canis familiaris bred in Utah is "truer" than a Labrador Retriever, Canis familiaris bred in Germany. They are both Canis familiaris. Makes no difference where they came from.

 

If you read my post, I mentioned they were taken prior to the strict enforcment of collecting them. All of hers are propagated from wild caught Rics. They have colors that you wouldnt believe, Kiki doesnt have just blue and green, she has all the colors, stuff that you wouldn't believe. I know her site doesnt look professional, Ive talked to her about that before. I know the people who work with her, I know the quality of what she sells.

 

Hmmm. If they were all collected before the strict regulations which have been put in place (which have been there for quite some time) why would they have had run ins with US Fish and Wildlife as recently as October of this year? On hand and in question was wild collected ricordea. These "strict enforcement and regulations" were in place well before October.

Before, the site used to have a message about US Fish and Wildlife mentioning a few officers names. Personally I took the page and the stuff they were saying on it as flaunting in front of USF&W. Apparently so did some others because at least one of the officers mentioned by name was, if I remember correctly, involved with the most recent situation. Since that incident that page has been taking down and all the information about what they were doing is long gone. All that exists is the one page now. Like I said, it would be prudent for people to do a little research about the place they are ordering from. A quick search can produce lots of information. It's all out there.

You didn't address any of my other issues I brought up. Did you read my post? Since you know the people they are working with you can set me straight. What makes the ricordea florida they have "TRUE" ricordea florida and the ricordea florida collected elsewhere...legally....not true ricordea florida?

As far as colors go, I have been doing this a long time and I probably have a few thousand pictures of all sorts of ricordea that has passed through my hands. I'd be happy to post some favorites. I really don't think that there's any ricordea coming out of US waters..legally or not...that warrants spending more than twice, in some cases three or four times as much per polyp than legal stuff collected eslewhere in the Caribbean.

 

Also, something I forgot to touch on. If all hers are propogated from wild caught rics, why are there wild catch ricordea available? Where are these wild caught, true ricordea florida polyps coming from?

Also, the site says no one from the states can buy the domestic ones (which would be the offspring a few generations down from the wild ones) and no one from outside the states can buy the wild ones.

So which is it? All the ricordea they have they collected long ago and propagate...that no one in the US can buy? Or they collect wild ricordea, not grown from the stuff they collected before the strict regulations...which can't be sold to anyone except those in the US?

I only ask you because of the relationship you say you have with the operation. You came off as being pretty knowledgeable about what goes on there. If you don't know, you don't know, it's no big deal.

But my suggestion stands. Research first.

 

If you have a license, you can collect a Single Polyp ONLY by law. Not only that, the attached substrate is highly regulated.

I don't know the outcome about Kiki's legal woes.....I think her (and I think Alex from Atlantic Marine Life in Miami) probably got slapped pretty hard a while back when they had this webpage http://ricordeas.net/package thumbing her nose at FWC. She basically said, come out on our boat and legally (WRONG) take as many Ricordia as you can carry. While the link doesn't work anymore, here's the package.

With the above said, I would suspect everything is above board now unless they are stupid. This page is wrong. http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache...s.net kiki ricordeas&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4

With Gorgonians, you can have 1" of substrate attached. With Ricordia, you can have 1/4 inch beyond the holdfast under current rules if I read the law correctly.

 

LOL never saw that page before (about the illegal harvesters). That is pretty ridiculous. Frankly with all the lengths it seems they went to to try and get others in trouble I amm surprised it didn't bring the hammer down on them sooner.

 

So they were taken in the mid 90's whn the enforcement was stepped up? Why did she just appear a few years ago then?

What do you consider to be propigated? F2, F3, F4? Certainly not F1 chop shopped