What's the deal? (Name brand corals)

[Piper27]

It seems there are a ton of people that like to buy named corals online. I can see why of course, better chance of the coral doing well and you know what it's going to look like (sometimes at least). I am curious to see some pictures and would love to hear some thoughts from people who like to collect stuff that is not named, being either wild or mariculture.
Personally I have gotten ten times the satisfaction from getting wild pieces and having them become amazing and colorful over time (sometimes years). Plus most of them have become more beautiful than even some of the high dollar "rainbow" acros (in my opinion at least). I have yet to grow a wild frag and have it become anywhere near brown too. I think the "stigma" of wild or mariculture corals staying brown is a little misleading. And also I am kinda confused on how SOME of these corals vendors or hobbiests are selling for hundreds of dollars actually sell. Some of them are nothing rare at all and still demand a high price tag.
All in all I like the named corals stuff but i feel like the hobbiests that are collecting and naming their own corals are few and far between.

Anyone care to share their opinion? Or post pictures of their nice or rare wild corals?

 

[ksicard]

I'm a shotty photographer especially with led's over my tank so I don't have any pictures to show. But I personally love maricultured pieces since they tend to be different than all the name brand corals and so far out of my 4 maricultured pieces none of them have browned out in the slightest bit. I made a thread about maricultured pieces and whether or not they turn and stay brown and I ended up getting mixed reviews some people saying they will all turn brown and others saying that if any do turn brown if you give them time they will come around. In my personal experience with these corals I haven't had a single issue with colors of my maricultured pieces even after 3-4 months of having the corals. I personally prefer maricultured pieces over name brands but I like to have a mix of both and name brands are nice because you can kinda plan which pieces you want compared to maricultured where you just have to wait untill that one piece catches your eye.

And I'm kinda new to sps so I'm not sure the difference between wild acros and maricultured. I can kinda see the difference but I haven't even seen a vendor that sells coral that's labeled as wild. Can you educate me on the differences between maricultured and wild?

 

[tbryan]

Well the names if nothing else help me to research a coral that i may be interested in,especially if the seller doesnt post a pic or has a crappy pic if it is named i can surely find a good pic of what it should look like online somewhere.

 

[Piper27]

Wild are cut from the reef, mariculture are fragged from a reef and grown out in the ocean by people, like an ocean frag tank.

I think the difficulty level of keeping wild or mariculture stuff is more intreauging to me than keeping someone's proven coral.

 

[NeilFox]

They don't really have name brand corals here in Vietnam. I have only seen wild colonies as a mater of fact. I have had a colony that looks pretty much identical to deepwater ORA Acro. Whatever that means. I couple Montis that don't look any different. An A. Seriotopora Hysrtix I think it is (Green Birdnest), A Stylophora and What I think is a digitata with some pink tips and nice colouration. In all honesty they don't look like the Divers Den pics for colour but I lean more towards lower Kelvin Lighting. My tank is only 6 months old and these guys aside from the Monti's havent been in there very long. I also suck at pics with my point and shoot. I tried a couple today.

The deepwater acro is starting to colour shift quit a bit though. He was a basic brown coral. Now the tips are Dark Green. A couple were in kinda rough shape (burned tips mostly, not terrible though just a few sticks). when I got them but seem to be picking up. Plus they arent frags but colonies. I fragged a couple ends off a couple.

I had a few wild Acros back in the day. Late Eighties, early nineties. I don't think they had frags back then. A couple STS'd a couple just sort of stayed the same and one grew nicely that I recall.

I am running the same basic setup as twenty years ago(straightup Berlin System). Just better lights. Before two 175 Hamilton/Coralvue MH, went to 400w Iwisaki's later and now a mid range MH T5 setup. Actually the Iwisaki's could seriously grow coar and with blue supplement looked pretty good; I see a few guys on here still using them. Now I have a way better skimmer and I am using 2 part at the moment instead of dosing Kalk. That may change though. It's too early to tell but time will tell how these guys will do. I hope to see a couple maturing colonies in six moths time.

 

[jda]

I don't care if it has a name, or where it comes from, but I want frags. I don't like wild or mari colonies since I want the frag to grow into the space in my tank that I made for it. I do like named corals for more than half of my tank because space is precious and I sometimes like to know exactly what I am getting.

I got these as frags from Wild and Mari Colonies:

 

[NeilFox]

I don't care if it has a name, or where it comes from, but I want frags. I don't like wild or mari colonies since I want the frag to grow into the space in my tank that I made for it. I do like named corals for more than half of my tank because space is precious and I sometimes like to know exactly what I am getting.

I got these as frags from Wild and Mari Colonies:

Looking great! I wish I could take pics like that!

 

[biggles]

Everything except for the clown is wild, he gets excited every time i go to the fridge as he knows that's where i keep his food - not exactly 'wild' behavior......... Excuse the snails, i just woke the tank up for a pic and they're all thinking ' what the hell, where's the bloody dawn effect ! '
I've under saturated the colors a bit but they're fairly close to what you see with your eyes. Tank is only 5 months old so it has a long way to go yet.

 

[Touring]

Everything except for the clown is wild, he gets excited every time i go to the fridge as he knows that's where i keep his food - not exactly 'wild' behavior......... Excuse the snails, i just woke the tank up for a pic and they're all thinking ' what the hell, where's the bloody dawn effect ! '
I've under saturated the colors a bit but they're fairly close to what you see with your eyes. Tank is only 5 months old so it has a long way to go yet.

Your tank looks beautiful!!! all your corals look perfect. nice display!!

 

[dvanacker]

Anyone can make a nice aquascape and load it up with wild corals in short order to have it looking nice but long term you are gonna have lots of set backs.

 

[Touring]

Anyone can make a nice aquascape and load it up with wild corals in short order to have it looking nice but long term you are gonna have lots of set backs.

really like what? he had his tank up for 5 months, looks good to me...

 

[psykobowler]

Name brand aquacultured corals are typically used to captivity. They color up and stay colored and grow into colonies when you know what you are doing. Wild and maricultured corals come in the store full of colors only to fade brown or die. The named corals are priced higher but less of a gamble than wild corals. I don't mind the stupid fancy name and the higher price as long as it is aquacultured.

 

[biggles]

Anyone can make a nice aquascape and load it up with wild corals in short order to have it looking nice but long term you are gonna have lots of set backs.

I live in Australia where i don't have access to a large aquacultured SPS industry so the only corals i see at my LFS's for purchase are wild collected branches and colonies. Short of snapping off a frag and binning the rest of the piece how exactly do you think i should go about stocking my tank dvanacker.
The OP asked for pics of wild SPS so i posted a couple and for some reason you then think it's ok to post a rude, nasty and ignorant statement attacking my reef - no idea what's going through your head tbh.

 

[franklypre]

I like big name corals because I can resell them and get my money back within a year. That said I like wild and maricultured as well, but I refuse to risk infecting my tank with the many pests that are often brought in from the ocean. For the same reason I don't really like most vendors either. Just my .02

 

[BigKahuna]

Anyone can make a nice aquascape and load it up with wild corals in short order to have it looking nice but long term you are gonna have lots of set backs.

Almost everything in this hobby is temporary IMHO, just some people are skilled and lucky enough to make it less temporary than others.

I live in Australia where i don't have access to a large aquacultured SPS industry so the only corals i see at my LFS's for purchase are wild collected branches and colonies. Short of snapping off a frag and binning the rest of the piece how exactly do you think i should go about stocking my tank dvanacker.
The OP asked for pics of wild SPS so i posted a couple and for some reason you then think it's ok to post a rude, nasty and ignorant statement attacking my reef - no idea what's going through your head tbh.

Thanks for the photos, the tank and corals look great to me. You should be proud. Just out of curiosity what do LFS's down there charge for corals being so close to the source?

 

[karsseboom]

Your tank looks beautiful!!! all your corals look perfect. nice display!!

Looks great! now keep up that up!

 

[karsseboom]

Anyone can make a nice aquascape and load it up with wild corals in short order to have it looking nice but long term you are gonna have lots of set backs.

Not necessarily, look at Andrews tank (v1 rotate). He started with what appears to be wild colony's. Infact look at most of all the tanks from Asia, they all start out with wild colony's. There are a lot of good expamples of beautify tanks started with wild colony's on the zeovit forums.

I agree with what you said but there are some pretty solid examples of successful systems with wild Sps.

 

[Piper27]

Yes he should be proud, looking forward to an update of that tank biggles. I am sure you are aware of any setbacks you might encounter. Although others that can't afford a tank full of nice wild corals or don't have the time or skill to set up something like that, may not know what the setbacks would be.

Dvanacker: I was hoping you had some pics

JDA: I love that austera! I grew one from a frag, great colors on that mariculture.

 

[dvanacker]

I live in Australia where i don't have access to a large aquacultured SPS industry so the only corals i see at my LFS's for purchase are wild collected branches and colonies. Short of snapping off a frag and binning the rest of the piece how exactly do you think i should go about stocking my tank dvanacker.
The OP asked for pics of wild SPS so i posted a couple and for some reason you then think it's ok to post a rude, nasty and ignorant statement attacking my reef - no idea what's going through your head tbh.

I was not trying to be rude. Just honest. Your tank is still young at 5 months. You asked how I think you should go about stocking your tank, well you could start by having patience and taking it slow. How long have you even been keeping SPS? What I would do is try a few pieces, give it time to see how they do than maybe add a few more. People who stock their tank with wild corals in a matter of a few months or less are asking for trouble. You could also find local reefers to trade SPS frags that have proven to be good aquarium specimens. You could also get frags of wild colonies, even frags of wild colonies tend to do better than larger pieces.

I see this over and over....in fact I just saw it on my local forum. Someone who has a tank a few months old decided to add 20 maricultured colonies and next thing you know there are threads about why they are dieing.

So...I can be quiet or I can be honest and give my best advice. I've learned many things, often the hard way and sometimes I like to share.

 

[dvanacker]

Not necessarily, look at Andrews tank (v1 rotate). He started with what appears to be wild colony's. Infact look at most of all the tanks from Asia, they all start out with wild colony's. There are a lot of good expamples of beautify tanks started with wild colony's on the zeovit forums.

I agree with what you said but there are some pretty solid examples of successful systems with wild Sps.

I guess success is in the eye of the beholder. I will say that zeo can do amazing things but I think these tanks still have problems in the longevity department. Often you see see posts of a beautiful tank with lots of new wild corals and never do you see updates a year or more in. No coral progression shots over time etc. What I sometimes see are new FTS with all new corals. Corals are treated almost as disposable in some parts of the world.

I'm not saying its impossible to have a nice tank stocked with only wild corals but its not easy and it doesnt happen fast.

Yes he should be proud, looking forward to an update of that tank biggles. I am sure you are aware of any setbacks you might encounter. Although others that can't afford a tank full of nice wild corals or don't have the time or skill to set up something like that, may not know what the setbacks would be.

Dvanacker: I was hoping you had some pics

JDA: I love that austera! I grew one from a frag, great colors on that mariculture.

pictures? you shouldnt have to look to hard, I post them all the time. look up my tank thread where I so how I have grown 90% of my corals from fragments or even my TOTM December 2012. Im usually quite modest but tonight Im feeling a little frisky.