90 Day Maricultured Sps Challenge

[Fishinabarrel]

Alright, so about 2 weeks ago I got in a shipment of Maricultured Acropora and some LPS from Kupang.
I got a lot of tenuis and millepora, and mix of others.

I’ve been trying to decide what to do with the Acros, and I’ve got it. I’m going to do an experiment.
I’m going to take 16 frags that I have cut from the shipment, and keep them in the same spot for the next ~90days, at least, and every Wednesday I’m going to check in and post notes on any deaths, struggles, etc, and of course - weekly pics of coral development and growth.
I have picked 12 of my 16 frags so far, and will finalize by Wednesdays posting.
Also, I will be selling my Frags for $25 each and $50 for Minicolonies soon on a seperate selling thread, and I am selling them cheaply because 1. I know they’re not colored up yet. 2. my hope is that people will also post their weekly updates for this thread too.

I’ve brought in Maricultured sps colonies a bunch of times in the past and watching them color up is so much fun, but it seems like there is a lot of concern about their short term health transitioning to aquarium life, so I’d like to get data on as many frags as possible!
I feel like I’ve always had tremendous survival rates, but I’d like to actually track it.
Any thoughts on what else I’m not thinking of that could be cool to add to the adventure.

Weigh each frag before and after the 90 days as a measure of growth. If they are thickening up at the base, it might not be obvious via pre and post pics.

Should they move around on the rack so that each frag gets equal light exposure / flow exposure?
(Every 2 days, they are move over one position).

Will rotating each frag on the frag rack have an effect?

All the water parameters will need to be recorded naturally.

 

[Zhubbell]

Where do you get these imports from? Do you know what you are getting or is it random?

I get to pick - to some degree anyway. This supplier I’ve used for my last two does some wysiwyg and some just species. This last box I got was just an “extra box” meaning I was offered the species list with no pics or much description and I said yeah I’ll take it.
They come from Kupang in Indonesia.
Always open to look for requests and have already been working to find australian, and other suppliers to offer more variety.

 

[Joe462]

Alright, here we go…

Here are my tank parameters
Calcium hasn’t been tested, but reagants will be here soon, I am pretty comfortable with my dosing/consumption rate, so I think I’m handling it pretty well in this interim.
My mag did get to high, I’m currently running 16g water changes every 2 days or so to try and help bring this down, but at probably 300g of water volume in the system, I’m just gradually bringing it down, which is the goal anyway.
I should for dosing A to bring calcium up to a target of 450, and try not to dip below ~410 in the process, not always successful, but more often the. Not.
For B I target 8.5 and try and not dip past 8.1
Mag I target 1400
I need to update my trace tests big time. That’s on my list for this week.
I am getting in 2 Maricultured Kupang acros fresh off of a super long transship tonight, so I’ll update you on those.
I tried to establish measurements in my vessels with water displacement, but here’s the problem, the frags are tall enough that I need a 60mL graduated cylinder, but at that size the different in the frags is not very destinguishable… like, they just all looked like they displaced about 5mL….
Any bright ideas on how I can get data outside of just pictures?

So….. how would you prefer that we try to gage our progress with the frags? I’m behind and I haven’t measured anything yet. But I have time this weekend to get something on the books.

is there an official start or has it started already? I’m a little confused. I’ll do whatever, with in reason, I’m more just curious how they all do more than anything else

 

[Zhubbell]

Well, that’s what’s I was asking above.
I’ve going to stick with weekly growth & color pictures, as well as my parameters each week, I really wanted to measure volume displacement so we could actually chart something but that’s seems too difficult.
Weighing seems reasonable but hard to maintain consistency with “how wet” the frag is….

Anyway, just got my new iPhone yesterday, so I’ll have some great pictures posting shortly.

 

[Joe462]

Well, that’s what’s I was asking above.
I’ve going to stick with weekly growth & color pictures, as well as my parameters each week, I really wanted to measure volume displacement so we could actually chart something but that’s seems too difficult.
Weighing seems reasonable but hard to maintain consistency with “how wet” the frag is….

Anyway, just got my new iPhone yesterday, so I’ll have some great pictures posting shortly.

Ok, that’s what I was wanting to know. I can do weekly pics no problem.

I also wasn’t sure how the volume and or weight thing might work

 

[Joe462]

10/10/2021 pics under full spectrum lighting

 

[Joe462]

couple other acros in that little grow out tank, with the challenge frags, pretty happy with things are doing in this tank.

 

[Zhubbell]

Alright, I added 2 frags, one brand new cut, 1st week in the us arriving from Kupang.
And I added a fresh cut frag off of an aquacultured colony, it was BC Lazermelon, already, a stunningly beautiful coral!
Thought that would be a good comparison.

 

[Joe462]

which one is lasermelon? I wish i had known you could do a frag of lasermelon, i have been trying to get one.

 

[Zhubbell]

I can’t lol. Got it from a fellow Reefer, and he has never cut his mother, it was huge - check with therman, he may sell you a frag now that he’s cut it! He’s stuff it primo!

 

[Joe462]

I can’t lol. Got it from a fellow Reefer, and he has never cut his mother, it was huge - check with therman, he may sell you a frag now that he’s cut it! He’s stuff it primo!

I should have known it was from him. He has all the BC gems. I should have asked about it when I ordered from him.

 

[nbooks]

sorry been super busy. Just did a water change and a whole bunch of cleaning over the weekend. Let everything settle and have an ICP going out tomorrow.

everything still looks happy.

 

[keifferhubbell]

Hey y'all here is an update on my two mariculture frags-I have been amazed at how fast colors are showing up and I can see new encrusting growth edge on the bigger frag/mini colony!

 

[Joe462]

Hey y'all here is an update on my two mariculture frags-I have been amazed at how fast colors are showing up and I can see new encrusting growth edge on the bigger frag/mini colony!

Those look great. I’ll get some pics of mine for an update tomorrow. A couple of them at least are encrusting pretty good

 

[nbooks]

now im even more anxious to get my icp back, my polyp extension is not great and one is STN'ing.

no change in stability.

 

[keifferhubbell]

now im even more anxious to get my icp back, my polyp extension is not great and one is STN'ing.

no change in stability.

What is your flow like? I find 50-100x turnover+ in the display helps with the mariculture acros. In my experience Stn often starts at the bottom of the frag or colony and works it's way up from there- the function of extremely high indirect flow is it allows they coral "skin" which is like it's vascular tissues to transfer needed metabolites to areas that aren't getting enough light stim or lack symbiotic algae in proper concentration. Also running light minimum 12 hours a day at a very daylight setting help IMO!!

 

[Joe462]

i didn't do a very good job with the whitebalance or the brightness on this one but they seem to be doing well and encrusting.

 

[nbooks]

What is your flow like? I find 50-100x turnover+ in the display helps with the mariculture acros. In my experience Stn often starts at the bottom of the frag or colony and works it's way up from there- the function of extremely high indirect flow is it allows they coral "skin" which is like it's vascular tissues to transfer needed metabolites to areas that aren't getting enough light stim or lack symbiotic algae in proper concentration. Also running light minimum 12 hours a day at a very daylight setting help IMO!!

I have a 500ish gph return pump and two nero 3's running at 100% most of the day (claims 2000gph) in a 2ftx2x2 cube, so flow should be ok. I'm growing other acros, just very slowly.

one frag is definitely losing tissue but it started out on the braches and not base up, it almost seems as if it just doesnt like the tank since its been 2-3 weeks. Another is also ticked off, has some algae growing on tips of corallites towards ends of branches but still has all tissue.

I swear ill find time to sit down and sum up the tank one of these days. I got the frags off the rack last night, but my ICP seems to be on the slow boat to germany due to equipment issues in the US lab...

 

[Zhubbell]

Rotated the frags a couple days ago, just front to back and Vice versa. Color is off the chart, 100% survival on my rack, but I will not, the yellow (now more green), tallest Mille in the front row now, all other frags have rtn d.
Other than that, I’ve had a couple frag deaths from placing things too close to my Gyre I think, but we’ll below 5% loss on all frags shipped, all frags here, and all colonies. I also included one that is really cool. Joe - yours is getting crazy green! I believe you are the only person who has this one - I didn’t frag it after that because I wanted to watch the colony grow out. Maybe we’ll have to get together and name it.
Want to test my iron this weekend and see if I need to up my dosing to get those crazy green you have pippin out of it!

 

[Joe462]

Rotated the frags a couple days ago, just front to back and Vice versa. Color is off the chart, 100% survival on my rack, but I will not, the yellow (now more green), tallest Mille in the front row now, all other frags have rtn d.
Other than that, I’ve had a couple frag deaths from placing things too close to my Gyre I think, but we’ll below 5% loss on all frags shipped, all frags here, and all colonies. I also included one that is really cool. Joe - yours is getting crazy green! I believe you are the only person who has this one - I didn’t frag it after that because I wanted to watch the colony grow out. Maybe we’ll have to get together and name it.
Want to test my iron this weekend and see if I need to up my dosing to get those crazy green you have pippin out of it!

Not certain which one you are talking about.

This one? The green tenuis looking one?