Where do our coral come from?

[SAWFISH]

They all came wild from the ocean at some point. At what point do you guys start calling it aquacultured? If I bring in an Acropora and then make frags, are those frags Aquacultured? What about in 6 months when I make the second round of frags off of the first frags? What about a year later? What if after a year I make frags off of the original piece are those frags less Aquacultured than the 3rd set of frags made off of frags? Just curiouse from the people who only want to buy Aquacultured coral.

Where I work I bring in wild coral or mericultured coral every few weeks, but we also aquaculture most of the stuff that we sell.

Adding on to what Ichthyogeek said above, I think I would consider the first frags of the wild colony as being wild caught corals. The second round of fragging and any following rounds of fragging I would personally consider to be cultured regardless of the time frame. I think it matters more that we are turning one coral into many through culturing rather than taking many from the wild. To your point all corals at one point or another came from the ocean, but from an environmental stand point it also matters how much and how frequently we take corals from the ocean, and I think culturing helps us take less corals at a lower frequency.

I also am not trying to make anyone feel bad for buying wild corals, I was just genuinely interested in knowing the answer to the question. I personally never gave a lot of thought into the corals I was buying so I was unsure where they came from!

Thank You for the question!