Personally, I sometimes group maricultured and wild in the same category. Wild colonies for the most part are taken off the wild reef which I really don't condone. Maricultured are wild "frags" that are still for the most part kept in shallow lagoons in pristine natural sea water to grow out. When I first started keeping SPS I didn't know any better and bought a wild colony. It RTN'd almost immediately. I fragged a tip off and was able to save it for 2 years before it just withered away. Maricultured in my opinion is really almost the same thing...(marine aquacultured). I still have one of my originals from around 3 years ago.
I think that the smaller the wild or maricultured colony the better the chance it has for survival. We fall in love with semi-mature colonies and stick them in our tanks where they are subjected to a captive environment of artificial light, different flow patterns and much more measurable organics than the sea from which they came. The aquacultured corals in our tanks that started as frags had a chance to acclimate to these environments. They do well IMO not only because they're more hardy, but because they are small and can develop their own growth patterns as they become accustomed to our systems. A larger wild colony has already shown the direction of its' growth footprint based on the natural sunlight and tidal flow it received on the reef. A deviation from these flow patterns (not just gph) could cause the coral to either not be able to compensate or not be accustomed to the sudden flow reduction or increase across a much more mature animal.
This is just my opinion but I've seen 2 of my local fellow reefers immediately hack up a wild colony and trade them with each other so that the smaller frags have a chance to develop in a captive environment and to have more corals between them. Some do well, but many if not most just dwindle away.
