I can clear up a few of the grey areas here:
I'm growing pretty much everything from aquacultured stock. Everything is at least second generation. Certainly not fragging wild colonies and selling for big mark up. All my colonies show good encrusting and I typically use dry wall plugs as the support.
Don't we all hate those power bills, especially you guys in CA. More than that though I wrestle with the fact that as coral farmers we sometimes argue that we're not damaging the reef. However the electricity that I'm using is coming from coal burning power plants mainly - so indirectly there is a contribution to green house gas emmisions and by now we all know that this is not helping the wild reefs.
Millimeter sized fragments was journalistic license. I certainly don't take a 1 mm fragment and grow it to a 2 inch colonies in 6 month. I do take fragments of less than 1/2 inch and grow them out to this size in 6 month though. Remember this is farming so more coral food and less fish than your standard display system keeps things in balance.
My typical SPS coral colonies go for $35- $50 retail. My only reference to $1,000 per coral was that there are examples of this - I only wish I could get $100K per month out of my vats- I certainly can NOT. I am farming some valuable LPS though including acans and blastos. Otherwise I favor the SPS but my biggest seller is - you guessed it ... xenia. These make the bulk of my sales and are also an important part of my nutrient export system.
Main point of this article was to communicate to the masses that our hobby is contributing something useful to science and the aquarium industry that doesn't always get a good name.
More info see my website (
www.reef-encounters.com)
I was as surprised as anyone that it got onto CNN.
SteveL
a.k.a. Steve Lowes - Coral Farmer
