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To your last point, certainly there is a sense of a “wild life Ark” impact of environmental strains on the environment. I for one try to donate to Florida University programs targeting coral recovery, propagation and repopulating. - just as a way to give back to the environment we all try to emulate with our builds. And by the way, have a few pieces of blue ridge flourishing in my tank.From a survivability stand point, aquaculture corals are far easier to take care of, with maricultured ultimately also being easier than wild collected. With aquaculture, you know exactly what you are getting, how it will color up in most tanks, and how easy it is to care for.
I personally love getting that wild collected acro that could start out brown and end up even more brown, or that one that starts out brown and colors up like a WD. You never really know how different wild collected corals (acros in particular) will color up in our tanks, and I enjoy watching that. The downside is that wild ones are much harder to acclimate, and often take a bit longer to begin growing.
Great topic
EDIT: From a sustainability standpoint, aquaculture is hands down the most sustainable with ocean collected coming in last. With that being said, Ocean collected pieces wont be a thing forever, in my mind the more varieties we can remove from the ocean and care for in a closed environment the better. If climate does kill many of the corals in the ocean, wouldn't it be better to have more species in aquaculture?
So far I've tried all three and have not had the stability to keep SPS successfully. My recent SPS was wild caught and its doing terribly. I think I'm going to stick with Aquacultured so I have some idea what it's going to look like and I can somewhat mirror the parameters it came from. With wild caught and maricultured it's a crap shoot if it will live or what colors they will maintain in the reef aquarium.Thanks to @Dolphins18 for the QOTD idea!
When it comes to corals there are three terms we use to label them. Maricultured, Aquacultured, and Wild Collected. The following definitions will vary somewhat but this is in my terms!
Maricultured - Corals that are grown from frags of wild colonies but are grown within the ocean in a controlled environment.
Aquacultured - Corals that have been grown out in captivity for an extended amount of time and have adapted to captivity.
Wild Collected - Corals collected straight from the ocean and then shipped to suppliers.
So let's talk about it!
1. Maricultured vs Aquacultured vs Wild Collected: Which do you prefer and why?
2. How do you take the proper steps to ensure your getting the type of coral you prefer?
3. What are some advantages and disadvantages of these three types of coral?
Coral mariculture at the Eilat’s mid-water floating nursery (10 m depth): new colonies are generated from small fragments (left in the photo) and reared until developed to large colonies ready for transplantation (right). Photo © Y. Horoszowski-Fridman
Where can one even buy wild colonies? Outside of the Florida keys softies I would imagine it’s hard to come past wild colonies in the hobby.
I'm very surprised by the vote tally thus far, given the overwhleming preference for aquacultured. That would lead me to believe that many people think they are buying aquacultured when they are really buying chop-shopped wild colonies that they think because they are on a frag disk, they are aquacultured.