Do you collect your skeletons?

Casket_Case · Jul 9, 2020

ZiBiReef said:
Was curious if people keep their skeletons? And if so do you remember what they were?

Setting up a reef after 7 years out of the hobby and I saved my rock. Came across these skeletons and I could picture every single one of them. These are some of the big ones

What was the sps coral skeleton there? Also I think it’d be so cool to have jewelry like a ring with the skeleton of a large polyp stony coral as the head of the ring.

Casket_Case · Jul 9, 2020

thatsruff said:
My wife was part of the team that re-built the New England Aquarium Great Ocean Tank. They cast coral replicas mostly directly from coral skeletons:

Since then we would always keep skeletons or collect them by digging through live rock bins at LFS:

We have a few castings in the house still:

What’s the last one there!? Is that a tube sponge?

NashobaTek · Jul 9, 2020

Ike said:
If you see anything you like... There's a RR colony in there that I estimated at 200 x 2" branches, a 1" frag still goes for $100-150. So, value potentially $20,000 alive, I'll give you an amazing discount for it dead

Cool, but I have to say the most I paid for any of the coral skeletons in the picture was 80.00 for big pieces of blue ridge. The red pipe organ was only 15.00. So it would have to be a big discount.

ZiBiReef · Jul 9, 2020

McPuff said:
I have kept a couple very large colonies that died during a bacterial bloom. But now I just chop them up, let them dry, and use them as media in my calcium reactor. Heck, I even do that with corals I trim, especially stags... can't find enough people to buy/take them half the time.

Send them my way, starting new tank

CtrlAltDelete · Jul 9, 2020

Yes, I have the shell of my tuxedo urchin. I keep it as a reminder that this isn’t just a hobby- we have a duty to take care of these
Creatures. I let the water get too evaporated and rather than slowly raise the salinity I got impatient and added a bunch of RO water. The major swing caused stress on my urchin and cause it to lose spines and die.

His little skeleton is on my shelf and it reminds me to not be lazy and be patient. That I’m a caretaker and have to earn the privilege to move up with the creatures in my care. As I get better and more knowledge and responsible I will earn the privilege to aqua ore more species, maybe even some that are on the decline taht I can help foster and bring back to life.

I’ve since gotten another urchin who I am careful of, and now a dwarf coral beauty angel who I’m a bit wary of as she’s been hiding more. I want more corals but until I have a better handle on her and her needs I have no business taking on more.

Sorry if I came across as a bit high and mighty, I certainly don’t mean to. I think we can sometimes take for granted that esp if it’s a cheap coral/fish/invert and thus “easy to replace.” These are still living beings we have a duty to