Why Captive Grown

[SamsReef]

Unfortunately, if you have been in this hobby long enough, you can relate to this. You bring a beautiful coral from a vendor. It looked nice the day one. Second day, it opened up fully and it looked gorgeous. You are totally psyched that this will grow into a showpiece. But then over the week, the polyp extension starts to diminish...the coral starts to brown out and then a week later the flesh starts to slough...you start googling about RTN, STN...start making water changes, adding "elixirs"...not realizing that most probably the coral is just dying out of starvation because it came from a very different environment. One of the two things could be happening.​

1) You have purchased a wild collected coral or Maricultured coral. The nutrient levels in the ocean is very different and the corals synthesize their proteins very differently. Corals have access to abundant phytoplankton/zooplankton and are under a very different spectrum of light. To make matters worse, most vendors fall in this category buy they do not disclose or pretend to have been "cooking". I cover some of the warning signs in another article.

2) The seller has been growing this coral under a water chemistry which is very different than your tank. So it is always a good idea to get full details of the water, PAR level, flow, etc from the tank it came from.

Once you find a seller, whose corals have been successful in your tank, you might want to stick to them. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Happy Reefing.
Sam

 

[chipchipbro]

absolutely on point, Sam. Theres nothing to add.
Sign!

 

[fish farmer]

I've done well with one particular vendor with tank grown stock, but they don't have wysiwyg, they do fresh cuts, sometimes the frag is generous and sometimes it is exactly what the description is, they do care about you getting your shipment and will pick up the phone if something is off about your order. Their stock is limited though.

I've started to look at other regional vendors that I can drive to or in the same climate as me.

 

[blue-thumb]

Differences in environment weakens the coral. The presence of pathogenic bacteria kill it. Vendors have long running stable systems with lots of coral. When bad things happen they take the offending coral and trash it. For a vendor, it's a small loss for a large gain.

On you body right now their are bacteria that can harm you. When you get a cut or a scrape they are constantly looking for the opportunity to invade. Good bacteria and your immune system is the only thing that stands between you and death. A little morbid but true. In reef keeping, the science isn't available to make rational decisions. For that reason, there are many magic potions and elixers on the market which make lofty claims created by people with good intentions. They may or may not work. In the end, you will not know why they did or did not work or what to do the next time the same problem arises.

 

[o2manyfish]

I don't believe the situation is as black and white as you have defined. Having been a part of one of the largest coral growout facilities and coral wholesalers on the West Coast, I have seen 10's of Thousands of corals come in from the wild.

I have seen 100's of thousand of corals growns out from wild colonies.

I have dealt with 100's of customers who have received everything from 48hr fresh from the ocean to 4 years captive grown.

And there isn't a specific set of rules that can be applied. An Aussie shipper can ship 400pcs of coral into the US and in 10-14 days you still have 400 great looking pieces of coral. Or you may have 300pcs of brown coral, Or 350pcs of Green coral, or 100 pcs of skeletons. It changes from shipment to shipment based on the shipping conditions, collection conditions, holding parameters, receiving parameters, time of year, dumb luck, postion of the moon, etc. You never know!

I also have first hand experience with 1000's of corals that came in from the wild and were doing horribly (whether full wild or Maricultured) and then by moving them to a tank where they get direct sunlight - rather than man-made (Halides or T5s) and the corals have immediately turned around and thrived.

I am in total agreeance with you that the amount of biodiversity for corals to feed on in the wild is different than our tanks. And that is why having Phosphates are not a bad thing. Those are the nutrients in the water for the corals to feed off of. So many people think a Phosphate reading is the end of the world and chase a number, not realizing that that number is only an issue in an aquarium with out a properly balanced biological filtration. There are numerous examples of long term (5-10+ year) healthy aquariums which run high phosphates (Think of values around 2-4 Not .02 or .2 but 2 and 4).

These are living creatures we are trying to care for. You can't create a set of Black & White rules that will apply. If you goto any large scale growout facility they may have 50-100K pcs of coral growing. And in closed systems, without anything new being introduced, every week they have to removed deceased pieces of coral. You can have a rack with 400 pcs of an identical coral and in the middle of all the 400pcs 1 is dead...Why??? All the conditions are the same. The conditions have been the same for months, the other 399 pcs look perfect and yet 1 is a white skeleton.

There are only so many variables that we can control (or monitor), and so many variables that we don't understand.

The fact that this hobby has done amazingly well with corals being passed from hobbyist tank to hobbyist tank shows you how easily corals can adapt to captivity.

Dave B