Florida Ricordea: Licensed, Local, Hand-Collected in the Keys

Most stores sell you a ricordea that crossed the Pacific in a bag. We collect ours. The Underwater Gardener is licensed to collect and sell Florida marine life, and Ricordea florida — the Atlantic ricordea — comes out of the water we work in, under license and inside state limits, then conditions in our Key West systems before it is ever listed.

One thing worth stating plainly, because it gets muddled constantly: Florida protects its stony corals and they cannot be taken from the wild — our stony corals are either aquacultured at the shop under Florida Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072 or conditioned in our Key West systems before they ship. Ricordea are corallimorphs, not stony corals, and collecting them is licensed and regulated. Anyone selling wild Florida stony coral is doing something illegal; a licensed Florida ricordea is a different animal in every sense.

Ricordea florida vs Ricordea yuma

The disc of R. florida is covered in dense round bobbles, evenly spaced like beading, with the mouth raised on a short cone in the middle rather than sitting flat. Color runs to orange, gold and green, with blues and purples turning up rarely enough that they carry their own prices. The Pacific Ricordea yuma is the one most shops stock — larger discs, bumps running onto the mouth cone itself. We keep both; the listings say which is which. The full mushroom breakdown: Discosoma vs Rhodactis vs Ricordea.

Care at a glance

Same treatment as any other mushroom: the shaded end of the tank and the softest flow you have. A ricordea that keeps detaching and traveling is telling you the spot is too bright. They divide by splitting, and a happy polyp becomes a small colony on its own schedule.

Ricordea in stock now

Florida ricordea are hand-collected under our Florida marine life license; yumas are individually photographed WYSIWYG. Either way, the photo is the exact animal that ships.

More of what comes out of local water — octocorals, macroalgae, inverts and fish — lives on the Florida Keys Marine Life page.

One thing to know before you order: the $10 Box & Handling Fee is charged by the box, not by the coral, and UPS Next Day Air is one flat shipping charge per order. A box holds several corals for the same $10 Box & Handling Fee and the same overnight ride, Florida orders under 6 lb ship UPS Next Day Air for a flat $30, and livestock orders of $349 or more ship free. If this page puts one coral on your list, it is worth seeing what else belongs in the box — start with corals under $100 or the newest WYSIWYG pieces.

Our stony corals are either aquacultured at the shop in Key West under Florida Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072 or conditioned in our Key West systems before they ship, and the photo on a WYSIWYG listing is the exact animal that ships. Corals ship UPS Next Day Air every Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are ever in Key West, come see the raceways.