Nuclear Green
Palythoa, a zoanthid. Beginner to keep, Typical PAR 75–150, moderate flow.
Rarity tier: common, reviewed 2026-08.
A large-polyp Palythoa with long flowing skirts running green through teal and yellow rather than one flat neon. Which species is unsettled: the trade strain has been associated with an undescribed Indo-Pacific lineage, Palythoa sp. "singapura", and the Palythoa grandis on many listings is a Caribbean animal rather than this one. Polyps are noticeably bigger and meatier than a Zoanthus of the same age, which is the reliable way to tell the two apart.
How to tell it is the real thing
It is easy to keep and it multiplies quickly, so the question is not whether it will outgrow its rock but what you do when it does. That matters more here than for most corals, because Palythoa is the genus that carries palytoxin and cutting a colony back is the documented way people are poisoned by it. Wear nitrile gloves and eye protection, keep the work wet, and never dry-scrape a colony or pour boiling water over its rock: heat aerosolises the toxin rather than destroying it, and the reported hospital cases are largely people cleaning rock indoors. Give it a rock it can have to itself and the problem mostly does not arise.
Keeping zoanthids
Low to middle rock, enough flow to keep detritus off the mat. Nuclear Green is beginner to keep at a typical PAR of 75–150 in moderate flow. A typical starting range for this type of coral rather than a measured requirement for this morph. Spectrum, how it was acclimated and the system it grew in all move it.
What Nuclear Green goes for
No verified sales yet. A range publishes once 3 dated, checkable records from 3 different sources exist, priced per polyp and reported as a median, with what shops ask kept separate from what buyers paid. One polyp, so a ten-polyp frag is divided by ten. Listings that do not state the count are dropped rather than assumed. Nothing on this page is for sale. Shops are typically asking $6 to $9 per polyp, median $7, across 4 shops surveyed on 2026-09-07; the full sweep ran $6 to $15. Asking prices are what sellers want, not what buyers paid. On 2026-09-07 it was in stock at 4 surveyed shops: boomcorals.com, cornbredcorals.com, prestigeworldwidecorals.com, vividaquariums.com.