florida , keys and sps sources
- Thread starter figuerres
- Start date
I am not asking about pulling wild coral off the reefs.
just aqua cultured frags from legit sources. heck I am also thinking that if we grow enough frags that in time we can plant some in the wild to help maintain / restore the wild reefs.
there is legal cultured rock and that has some corals on it and as far as I know that is legal.
just aqua cultured frags from legit sources. heck I am also thinking that if we grow enough frags that in time we can plant some in the wild to help maintain / restore the wild reefs.
there is legal cultured rock and that has some corals on it and as far as I know that is legal.
Find a good aqua cultured live rock source, there are several down here. Basically they dump Marco rock on a lease site for a few years then pick it back up and sell it. If you have never seen well kept live rock before you'll be in for a surprise. It's full of life, crabs shrimp, gobbles, algae and coraline even found some octopuss eggs once. It's not the typical dead coral skeletons with maybe some rotting zoanthids or sponges you typically see elsewhere in the country. I would say pocillopora about the size of a dime are present on one in 5-10 rocks, some kind of lps, like button polyps or meat corals on one in 50 rocks if your lucky. So it is possible to get going legally but to be honest, the colors are pretty drab and it's a lot of work searching, only ricordia, anemones and gorgonias can be bought as corals. I doubt you will ever see a staghorn or elkhorn recruit legaly atainable. I saw a thread a few weeks back of someone who did this with a 20 or 30g and it took him 7 years to get a decent looking tank, but he was also importing LR to NY and by decent I mean a bunch of green meat corals, not too diverse. By the time I put together a 150g sps system I would put some bright south pacific corals in there.
thanks for the info, I ran a reef tank for several years but had to stop for the last 5 and I am checking on what I can or can't get.
seems really a shame that so many places are selling pacific stuff and no one has a decent carib. stock
I wonder if there is any hope or chance that something might be done to culture Caribbean corals, I know that there are problems with wild reefs all around the world all of them need to have some kind of cultivation program going on. well I can't fix the whole thing but I will see what I can do without a day in court or in jail.
I guess I may wind up with some pacific stuff that looks like it belongs.
I read in another thread that the guys at tampa bay saltwater entered into a project with one of the schools in Florida to mariculture Caribbean SPS. I don't know if the plan was to eventually sell the grown pieces or if it was purely academic, but it may be worth the time to reach out to them. I think the owner posts on here regularly.
LOL...... funny you say that my prior reef tanks were using rock and sand from www.tampabaysaltwater.com and that is my prime source for the new tanks startup. I was just thinking that some other folks might have more coral focused operations that I should check out.
TBS rock is always amazing!
Yeah he as a sub board in the vendors area.
I know him but have not talked to him in the last 5 years. looks like I will be talking to him over the next few weeks about what he has going on these days.
Purely academic. Richard (Tampa Bay Saltwater) kindly donated the live rock. Tropical Atlantic (Caribean/Florida, etc.) hard corals are not available to hobbyist via any legal source. Universities, public aquariums, researchers can only do so with proper permits. However, that does leave some very nice gorgonians, ricordeas, etc. available, and that can make quite a nice reef display when paired with Florida aquacultured live rock such as the stuff from TBS.
Has been going on for a loooong time now.
The folks that do grow out and transplant, such as the Coral Reef Restoration Foundation, not only need permits, but also follow some stringent rules to avoid any such contamination.
which totally is right.
if someone was going to be allowed to grow for the wild reef I hardly picture them pulling something out of a home tank and diving with it, I would expect a process where the candidate frags get examined, spend time in a qt system, and carefully vetted as "Safe" my a marine biology team that has the tools to check and reject frags found to carry harmful infections or parasites or non native growth that can not be removed.
the benefit to the folks doing the "planting" is an increase in the amount of stock they can plant. and like a human medical study there would need too be a set of clinical processes and procedures to assure clean safe frags are planted.
Not a simple overnight thing but how else will we make progress in saving rare and endangered reefs ? No I am not forgetting the other things like less garbage in the water and safe boating and global warming and the effects of land based use of chemicals like fertilizers and pesticides that I am sure all contribute to the problems.
jdhuyvetter
SWFMAS Event Coordinator
Coral Restoration Foundation does have some Acropora on a very limited basis from aquacultured liverock. However, last time I talked to them about it, they were only selling to public aquariums. Try Tampa Bay Liverock or KP Aquatics for aquacultured coral rock.
