Cespitularia Update

[Marc Daniels]

I thought I would show a current pic of my Cespitularia that I got in February. I purchased two frags of 8-10 polyps each in February. Today, each piece has 10-12 large stalks with 7-10 polyps on each stalk, and there are also 4-5 small daughter colonies that have split off. Total, I figure there are approximately 28 or so individual stalks, some growing from a joined base. I'm going to give my hands another week or two, and then start fragging. My goal is to get split the coral every two weeks. So week one would give me 4 large colonies, then 8 colonies, 16 colonies, etc, I'll keep splitting it until I have all of the main stalks on their own plug. Then every two weeks I will frag 20% of the corals, and offer 5% for sale and 2% for trade. My goal is to get 1000 corals, between three separate dedicated systems. This way a single issue won't wipe everything out. To my knowledge, no one is attempting to mass produce this coral at all, and at $120 per very small frag I think it is well worth the effort. I estimate that it would take approximately a year to reach 1000 pieces. This will act as my brood stalk, and I would then setup a harvest rotation.

Anyway, here are two pics from today. This is a single coral, and shows how fast it has grown from a single stalk of 8 polyps in 4 months.

This is a picture from April 8, the coral pictured above is the one in the front left of this pic 2.5 months ago. You can see how much growth there has been. In the pic below there were only 2 large stalks.

 

[funman1]

I had no idea that stuff was worth that!!
I love the look of that stuff.

I have seen it before and love it..

I need to get a frag somewhere and propagate it so more people can enjoy it.


Here is a really cool pic from anthony calfo.

 

[Justin74]

Cool venture Marc Id like to hear more about it.

-Justin

 

[Marc Daniels]

This is what mine looks like under 10k with actinics.

 

[Marc Daniels]

Here is my sparkle shot sort of like Anthony's. This is how you can tell it isn't just a Xenia. Xenia won't look like they are sprinkled with pixie dust. Anthony's is just taken under different lighting, and with a much better camera.

 

[Marc Daniels]

Okay, Anthony's shot is a close up of a single stalk. My colonies are a lot larger, and I have trouble getting that detail. His shot is taken with the lghts off, using a flash. Here's my attempt to duplicate it.

 

[MandM]

That's looking really nice Marc! I'll be in line for a frag. Did you set up a single species tank for it?

 

[Marc Daniels]

Yes, I currently have it in a 40g monoculture. The coral is in a 20g, and it is plumbed into another 20g algae refugium packed with chaeto on a reverse photoperiod. The refurium is just to help with pH stabilization. I have two Maxi-Jet 900's hooked onto a wavemaker providing alternating current.

I'm keeping the pH up fairly high with a daily swing of 8.42 - 8.49, and alk in the 11.5-12 range. This coral really thrives at levels that high, as was suggested to me by Anthony Calfo. I have some LR and sand for filtration, that's it. I do 4g water changes weekly.

 

[Underwaterparadise]

killer!

 

[Freed]

Please put me in line for a frag. Will you update this thread every so often? Thanks.