What's your opinion? At what point is a coral considered aquacultured?

[John Robbins]

Many of the corals available nowadays are frags/clones from a larger colony that at some point in the past was collected from the ocean, when do you think it is legit to call it an "aquacultured" or "captive bred" coral?

 

[Reefer40b]

Me personally if I have had the coral for 2 years that's when I consider it aqua-cultured. This will vary greatly as there is no set standard that I'm aware of. As far as captive bred that would only be if I was spawning coral... which I do not.

 

[Brian_68]

To me if you frag a wild caught coral it is not aquacultured but if you then frag that frag once it grows large enough it is in my opinion.

 

[Auquanut]

Seems to me that if you frag a coral, the frag could be considered aquacultured since it was not individually harvested from the ocean. Even if the parent coral was.

 

[sde1500]

Me personally if I have had the coral for 2 years that's when I consider it aqua-cultured. This will vary greatly as there is no set standard that I'm aware of. As far as captive bred that would only be if I was spawning coral... which I do not.

To me if you frag a wild caught coral it is not aquacultured but if you then frag that frag once it grows large enough it is in my opinion.

I think I agree with both of these. Wild harvested with plenty of time to put out new growth in a tank would count imo. Not chopping off the first new polyp or branch you get, but years of consistent growth. Also frags from wild corals that are grown out and dragged again.

 

[ZoWhat]

If it takes a human to care for the coral, then IMO it's no longer wild and its aquacultured.

This includes this on leased parts of the Ocean floor:

 

[EMeyer]

I am glad you raised this question. Its an interesting topic and I think the label gets widely misused.

IMO there is not any difference, for exactly the reasons already mentioned in this thread. Its like "all natural" food; a label without any real meaning. Its like making a digital copy of a file, and calling one "an original" and the other one a "copy". No, they are identical, indistinguishable copies.

Every coral in the hobby was harvested from the ocean. When you cut a branch off the coral, you get another copy of the same coral, not a new coral.

Is there a difference between corals? Yes. But the differences result from
a) selection on existing variation. every individual coral is different. Some dont do well in captivity, some do. The corals people are calling "aquacultured" are the subset of wild corals that make this transition well.
b) acclimation. Any animal, when placed in a new environment, may to some extent shift its physiology to increase its fitness in the new environment. Its still the same animal. When a catfish increases its heat tolerance in the summer no one calls it a new fish. Wild corals acclimated to tanks are still wild corals.

IMO the only aquacultured corals are produced by sexual reproduction which is exceedingly rare in captivity; although lots of reefers have witness reproduction by Pocillopora thats asexual brooding, not sexual reproduction -- it makes clones of mom.

 

[John Robbins]

I think I agree with both of these. Wild harvested with plenty of time to put out new growth in a tank would count imo. Not chopping off the first new polyp or branch you get, but years of consistent growth. Also frags from wild corals that are grown out and dragged again.

Me personally if I have had the coral for 2 years that's when I consider it aqua-cultured. This will vary greatly as there is no set standard that I'm aware of. As far as captive bred that would only be if I was spawning coral... which I do not.

 

[John Robbins]

Me personally if I have had the coral for 2 years that's when I consider it aqua-cultured. This will vary greatly as there is no set standard that I'm aware of. As far as captive bred that would only be if I was spawning coral... which I do not.

Thank you for sharing your opinion.
Why specifically a two year time period?

 

[John Robbins]

To me if you frag a wild caught coral it is not aquacultured but if you then frag that frag once it grows large enough it is in my opinion.

Thank you for the thoughts.
When do you consider it to have grown large enough to frag? Would you not still be fragging the same coral that was wild caught? Where is the marker to say it has grown enough to frag and call aquacultured?

 

[John Robbins]

If it takes a human to care for the coral, then IMO it's no longer wild and its aquacultured.

This includes this on leased parts of the Ocean floor:

Thank you for the input and the photo. Do you think growing corals in leased ocean space could be considered "maricultured"?
In your opinion, what is the defining difference between aquacultured and maricultured? Is there a difference?

 

[John Robbins]

I am glad you raised this question. Its an interesting topic and I think the label gets widely misused.

IMO there is not any difference, for exactly the reasons already mentioned in this thread. Its like "all natural" food; a label without any real meaning. Its like making a digital copy of a file, and calling one "an original" and the other one a "copy". No, they are identical, indistinguishable copies.

Every coral in the hobby was harvested from the ocean. When you cut a branch off the coral, you get another copy of the same coral, not a new coral.

Is there a difference between corals? Yes. But the differences result from
a) selection on existing variation. every individual coral is different. Some dont do well in captivity, some do. The corals people are calling "aquacultured" are the subset of wild corals that make this transition well.
b) acclimation. Any animal, when placed in a new environment, may to some extent shift its physiology to increase its fitness in the new environment. Its still the same animal. When a catfish increases its heat tolerance in the summer no one calls it a new fish. Wild corals acclimated to tanks are still wild corals.

IMO the only aquacultured corals are produced by sexual reproduction which is exceedingly rare in captivity; although lots of reefers have witness reproduction by Pocillopora thats asexual brooding, not sexual reproduction -- it makes clones of mom.

Thank you for thinking about this with me.
So you are proposing the definition of aquacultured as only animals that were truly spawned in captivity?
If I have a coral that has been in captivity 10 years and i cut off a polyp of the colony that has been completely generated in captivity you would propose that this polyp frag is still a wild caught coral?

 

[EMeyer]

Because it is still genetically identical to the original wild coral I would say yes, it is the same coral. I realize that my distinction basically means there are no aquacultured corals. So some may see it as not a useful distinction and thats fine. My point is to emphasize the huge difference between for example varieties of flowers, or varieties of purebred dogs, and corals.

A poodle in your living room is the result of selective breeding. There is no animal in nature genetically identical to exactly that poodle (or any poodle).

A rose in your garden is the product of selective breeding. There is no plant in nature genetically identical to that rose (or any rose with domesticated characteristics).

A coral in your tank is NOT the product of selective breeding. It was brought in from nature and the same coral now grows in your tank.... its just been fragged a bunch since it was brought in. Depending how they harvested it, somewhere out there on the reef is a coral colony that is 100% genetically identical to yours.

If two corals are the same coral, how can one be wild and one be aquacultured? That is my thinking on it.

 

[Auquanut]

We may be looking at this from the wrong angle. The definition of cultured is "grown or propagated in an artificial medium". When the doctor takes a throat culture to test for strep, she/he is not altering the culture, just growing it out.

I think that for most of us, an aquacultured frag simply implies that it came from a parent that has grown in an artificial environment (whether the parent or parents parent were harvested or not), and that the frag itself was not harvested from the ocean.

We're looking for the piece of mind that comes from the idea that the frag is a known performer in the artificial environment, and that we're not doing quite as much damage to the natural reef when making a purchase.

 

[Billdogg]

My thoughts on the subject are as follows.

If the coral in question was taken directly from the reef and is now in your tank at home (middlemen notwithstanding), then I would consider it to be a wild harvested coral (not caught - I think that too is a misnomer)

If the coral in question was first a wild harvested coral, then fragged and those frags were allowed to grow out in the ocean, I would consider that to mean it was maricultured.

If the coral in question has been grown out in a artificial environment - anyone's system not a part of the ocean - then that coral should be considered to be aquacultured.

jm.02

 

[rogersb]

Many of the corals available nowadays are frags/clones from a larger colony that at some point in the past was collected from the ocean, when do you think it is legit to call it an "aquacultured" or "captive bred" coral?

I bought a bowerbanki that was wild. It slowly grew new heads that I fragged off. I consider those heads aquacultured because they never knew natural sea water, only my glass box with IO. For me that's the definition of aquacultured.

 

[ca1ore]

Seems to me that if you frag a coral, the frag could be considered aquacultured since it was not individually harvested from the ocean. Even if the parent coral was.

Yup, agreed.

 

[ca1ore]

Many of the corals available nowadays are frags/clones from a larger colony that at some point in the past was collected from the ocean, when do you think it is legit to call it an "aquacultured" or "captive bred" coral?

I’m not aware that anyone is captive breeding corals - that would be pretty cool! It’s all ‘vegetative’ fragging. Some fish are captive bred, though in other cases the eggs/gametes are wild collected and captive raised.

 

[John Robbins]

I’m not aware that anyone is captive breeding corals - that would be pretty cool! It’s all ‘vegetative’ fragging. Some fish are captive bred, though in other cases the eggs/gametes are wild collected and captive raised.

People are absolutely spawning corals in captivity and it is definitely pretty cool!

 

[ca1ore]

People are absolutely spawning corals in captivity and it is definitely pretty cool!

Commercial or research? Care to provide links?