Coral Farmers

[Mikey]

I'm wondering if there are any farmers on this board. I'm only running about 300g worth of systems now, but will double it soon. I'm able to supply lfs's with endess supplies of xenias. Thats been my focus so far, but I'm now looking to branch into other corals. Are there any other small scale farmers here? What is your focus?

[Reef Junkie]

Mikey,
I think Kirbster has some experience with coral farming. You might want to drop him a line.
Later,
Bill

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http://www.homestead.com/reefjunkie/highenergy.html

[Mikey]

ok thanks RJ.

[Minotaur15]

Mike,

I am doing as much as I can. Xenia is my biggie as well, but I am doing every other soft coral I can get my hands on including several species of sinularia, zoanthids, yellow polyps, shrooms etc..

[Frisco]

I also try to do my part, but I too have only focused on xenia so far.

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http://members.xoom.com/FriscoReef/

[ATLANTIS]

I have lots of xenia (seems like the biggest seller here) but have been concentrating on SPS. Most of my xenia has gone to the LFS's and the SPS is starting to move on the internet..

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brian

atlantisaquatic.com (http://atlantisaquatic.com)

[Kirbster]

I'm doing Xenia (who isn't?), various Sinularia, Lobophyton, and Sarcophyton leathers. Lately I've been focussing on Nepthya, Capnella, and Lithophton - the "Tree" corals. Also the Zooanthids and other "polyps".

I quit supplying stores temporarily because I couldn't keep up with the demand. Actually I can't keep up with the demand from individuals for sale and trade.

I am accumulating parent stock for some LPS actuvity. That is is the future, although I already have babies from a Frogspawn, a Blastomussa, and an Elegance. LPS's are a looooooong term proposition.

I am running all of this out of 800sq ft with a basement. About 4,000 gallons, and that includes live sand vats in the basement that don't do much of anything.

My crack team of engineers (aka a guy I met at an LFS two years ago and his big, strong, weight-lifiting brother) and I are plotting the erection of a 1,000 sq ft greenhouse. I don't know how that's going to fly.

10-o-4, Good luck with that LFS. That was my idea when I first opened. Lots of problems. The idea is great, and in a large market, it might work. I was in too small a market, and I was also too vocal through our club and on the internet. There are some retailers around here very :mad: with me.

KA



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"You must unlearn what you have learned."
-Yoda

[billsreef]

I'm primarilly doing softies right now, mostly Sacrophytons, Lobophyton, various polyps and a purple gorgonian. I'm waiting to see what everyone says about the new blue line ballasts and then set up a couple of SPS tanks.

The idea of a LFS breeding thier own stock sounds great, but after 10 or so years in the trade I can't see it working. A breeding/propogation farm takes a lot of dedicated work and running a decent LFS also takes a lot of time and effort. However, I can see a LFS doing well by offering tank raised specimens when available.



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Bill

If damsels grew as big as sharks, the sharks would run in fear!
My dive photos (http://hometown.aol.com/billsreef/)
ICQ 56222784

[horge]

An LFS could run into trouble with even a small propagation effort. There are other concerns to compete for the owner's attention.

I cannot understand why US aquarists (based on posts everywhere) depend so heavily on LFS or MO sourced coral. (I have propagated what you call SPS and a few LPS corals for some years now.) US reef enthusiasts already have good equipment, spent for, in/on/under their tanks. There is an enormous quantity of well-established, harvestable coral in your tanks collectively. You should actually HAVE to harvest some, or the tank wars get out of hand.

In answer to the original post (sorry for the rant, mikey and all):
I presently focus on Stylophora spp. (a comfortably small brancher); Pectinia spp.(potatochip-like blades); and Pavona spp.("cactus" coral). I'm also killing myself over Heliopora coerulus (Blue "coral"), but given my problems (temp. related?), I might as well have NO experience with the it.

Kirbster! Either you are unmarried or have a wife as understanding as mine, hehehe. The whole basement, eh? Oooops, maybe you're sane and don't use your house..

[This message has been edited by horge (edited 01-07-2000).]

[Kirbster]

Horge,

No, I'd never get away with that at home. Actually I might...I have the most understanding wife in the world. I rent a commercial place in town. Location is bad for retail, but the rent is cheap, so it's going to be my home base until the greenhouse project takes wings.

Pectinia, huh? Interesting. That's not a coral we see a whole lot of here.

KA :cool:

[FOX]

There's a guy that goes by Kapu180 on Aqualink. I haven't been on there much lately but if you can get a hold of him, he's doing alot of xenia, sps and even some lps like candy cane. He recently moved, but last time I was at his house, he had at least 40-45 sps cuttings going.

FOX

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angelfire.com/ak3/korysreef.htm (http://www.angelfire.com/ak3/korysreef/)

[IronLung]

Horge,

since u r looking into the helio. let me share this strange occurance with u...maybe u have some answers or a similar incident


a while back it looked as if my helio was experiancing some growth ...i was amzed at how steady it seemed to be growing...it was strange to me as it had not shown any signs of growth from the time i first got it(probably a year)....then voila a growth spurt...the tips of the ridges started extending and had the similar growth signs as that of many SPS coral...now i know the blue ridge is not an SPS so i was a little skeptic as y it was so similar...anyways this was going on for a while then one day i came home and saw the growth area had started to balloon...like cheese puffs, it stayed like this for a couple of days then all of a sudden the tips blew up...it looked like torn styrofoam...i can't understand what happened all the sps and other corals were fine and growing very fast...i thought that was it for the blue ridge but to my relief it slowly started to recover to the point were it's starting to grow again and now i think it might do the same thing all over again... i wonder what is causing this behavior....also the polyps seem to have gone on a vacation as i have not seen any polyps extend in a long long long time...i know they r very finicky but i ussually get some extension at least once a week.....i have thought about propping the coral many times b4..but have not done so.....

have been lucky to prop 8 species of SPS
3 species of xenia
several leathers
tried to prop yellow scroll but ended up dying on me :(
tried to prop hammer and anchor but i got too scarrrrrrreddddddd :)

i think i thought about farming corals since that first success in propagating...i don't know if i could see it as a money making idea..though i wouldn't mind ;) if that happened... a small scale farm would be great in the near future..where the main purpose is to help circulate various species of corals to all of our tanks...i couldn't see it becoming something like GARF...no offense to GARF but as soon as money comes to the picture thats when i would really start to lose the enjoyment...

what i'm trying to say is i'm really an idiot who is illiterate and refuse to be financially sound....hmmmm does this ramble belong in the LOUNGE

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[horge]

Iron Lung:
No, never had my Helio popcorn out like that. Polyp extension can go off for days at a time though IME.

I'll never forget the first time I saw the polyps extended, years ago. I was scared to death that some white marine fungus was at work! Hahaha. Stupid me.

My Helio frags aren't growing even 5% as fast as the parent colony (still on the reef) that I am monitoring. I think that I might return them this Sunday: a year of trying is enough. You keep me posted on yours Ironlung, okay?

[IronLung]

no prob...Horge i'll keep u posted...may even frag it soon...maybe tank raised will do a little better...by the way if u don't mind me asking...are u a filipino?....i have family down there...i might be going to visit some time in the near future....would love to see where all the coral research areas r?

later,
mike

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[ignatz]

I have a few questions for all of you farmers out there.

Can you give a description of the work involved in farming?
Can you give a description of your setup?
Can you tell us what you have found to work, and what doesn't and why?
Would you recommend farming to all hobbists?
How is farming different from just reefing? (I have proped my softies, and my SPS...)
Can you give an idea of the economics involved?

It seems like this type of effort is going to be the most benefical contribution any "hobbiest" can make to the preservation of our natural reefs while simultaneously sustaining the hobby. I personallly have a small, but successful reef... I thought that I wanted a bigger reef and began collecting the necessary equipment. Now I have a 225G aquarium, sump, lights, etc. laying around the house, and have been contemplating putting this equipment to use in a farming effort.

Thanks in advance for your input.
~ignatz

[DaCross]

I thought I would toss in my $.02.I have started to do a little farming and so far I guess you would say I am breaking even,at least am not spending my money anymore :).I have made the best with Xenia like everybody else and the same leathers.Now I have started on Pom-Poms,Candy Canes,Sps,and Live Sand.
Derek
Ps Ignatz I still have a Ricordia you wanted.
:p

[Still Reefs]

Hey everyone,

I know this is a little off of the original topic but I thought it may help a little. I have had GREAT success propagating Heliopora courulea! If you look at my webpage, that Blue Ridge is the one I propagate. All of that vertical growth that you see was grown in my tank. I have never witnessed this "popcorning" that you all describe but I have noticed that when a growth explosion develops, the tissue and the skeleton are SUPER soft! If you touch the area it will literally crumble. With the frags I find that they spread out a foot growth VERY FAST! I am growing this in my 29 gallon SPS tank lit by NO and VHO tubes, I just moved a large frag to my friends 225 that has 5 halides and VHO and PC Actinic lighting, his is footing rapidly and also growing new branches. This frag was about 1 inch wide and 2 inches high. For more info on my success with this coral, feel free to e-mail me for more details!

Hope this helps!


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Sean Bradley
Photographer : Still Reefs Photographic Productions
Still Reefs' Homepage (http://stillherps.herpexchange.com/stillreefs)



[This message has been edited by Still Reefs (edited 01-09-2000).]

[IronLung]

Sean,

that is what was happening with my helio....except that for some reason the soft tips exploded and crumbled....now they are healed and new tiny multiple tips/branches are forming over the places where the explosion occurred...pretty weird...

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[horge]

Good for you, Still Reefs! What's your tank temp? You and Ironlung keep us all posted!

Just returned my frags to the wild this Sunday (I have an anchoring system that can't be beat). Yes, Ironlung, horge is Filipino, and technically a fugitive, hehehe.

Coral propagation of any sort is illegal here, hence my reluctance to describe myself in detail. This zero-tolerance law is however made a mockery of in the light of the dried-coral and live coral export that continues unabated. (And what about dredging, dynamite fishing, reclamation, etc?)

The BFAR (Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources) here tried to have me jailed some time ago. So, Ironlung, there officially AREN'T any coral farms here, hehehehe. It's an underground, small scale networked thing (all Filipinos are slap-happy anarchists/revolutionaries anyway...when government ineptitude calls for it).

[Still Reefs]

Horge,

I try my best to keep my tank at around 77F but it gets as low as 76.2F and as high as 79.5F. My strain of Helipora is definitely a surviver!

LATER!


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Sean Bradley
Photographer : Still Reefs Photographic
Productions
Still Reefs' Home (http://stillherps.herpexchange.com/stillreefs
)

[SJLord]

Can someone/anyone give me a book name or some reference on how to setup the tanks? eg. I have 2x the rock in my display tank, and I figure that there has to be another way for the growout tank. Filtering/Live Sand? I am still concidering growing some live sand and selling it, anyone else doing that? Doug had given me a good idea with lighting, shop lights for the sand, but what about filtering on a grow out tank? can I use one with the other? so, im thinkin maybe a book should be out there ... haha

TIA
Steven

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Cant Afford it, Save up, youll need it!

[ATLANTIS]

Ignatz,

I will try to answer your questions...

&gt;Can you give a description of the work involved in farming?

After the initial setup it's a lot like keeping a reef (a really big reef). You are striving for an equalibrium, only on a larger scale... Then of course the fun part, there is a lot of fragging.... I mount my frags on aragonite/cement/oyster shell plugs I make. And that can take a lot of time in itself. Then the not so much fun part, there is the work to sell your products... another story all together.

&gt;Can you give a description of your setup?

I am rather small scale. I run out of my cellar.I have 5 AGA 40 gal breeders and 3 AGA 30 gal breeders all rack mounted running through a 150 gal sump. I built the sump with 5 compartments so it has a integral refugium. Each tank has 4 powerheads running off of 3 Wavemaster Pro wavemakers. The 5 40's each have 400 watt MH + 96 PC actinic, they are my SPS tanks. The 3 30's have 3 96 watt PC's. (OH boy you should see my electric bill). I skim 24x7. I have a DIY calcium reactor based on the K2R design. Sump has 3 300 watt heaters and each tank has a 200 watt heater.

&gt;Would you recommend farming to all hobbists?

It is a lot of fun. It is a lot of work (the way I am doing it) It depends on the amount of time you have for it. I do not expect to quit my day job, but I have a lot of flexability in my schedule.

&gt;How is farming different from just reefing? (I have proped my softies, and my SPS...)

I think the biggest difference is the scale of things. I am small scale.. But bigger than the average reefer. Look at Kirbster's 4000 gallons. That's a commitment!! I would love to hear more about his setup.

&gt;Can you give an idea of the economics involved?

Spend an enourmous amount of money up front. Hopefully get a little in return down the road...


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brian

atlantisaquatic.com (http://atlantisaquatic.com)

[Kirbster]

My setup is nothing special at all. I simply have a few large, individual tanks with the parent corals. These are kept just like display reefs in any home would be kept. I started out using the sumps of these for healing and growout tanks. Now I have a healing tank system and a growout tank system.

The nice thing about "farming" is that you can do it on any scale you want. You can farm one species from a single parent and leave it at that if you want.

Economics? I started my place with the intention of making it an LFS, so I would do some things differently if I had to do it over again knowing I would make it a farm. Look for LFS's going out of business. ALso look for individuals selling off their stuff. My whole operation was created from "used" stuff. I would say you could do what I am doing for a start up of less than $15,000. That's presuming you find some great steals. I am always sniffing around for four grand worth of stuff being sold off for a few hundred bucks. It happens all the time and people wonder how I'm always the first one there. :D

If you want to propagate Cabbage Leathers in a two tank system, you can spend $200 and be ready to go.

Selling the things is the tough part. I am recruiting other people to sell stuff. I have a tendency to give everything away, just because I love seeing people get good deals. I need some hard a$$ salesmen to be my front men.

KA :cool:

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"You must unlearn what you have learned."
-Yoda

[horge]

My mind is reeling from the amounts of money being discussed. Maybe I'm geographically spoiled, and maybe I just don't know any better.

When so much is poured into it, I can see why you "Western devils" (as the Chinese supposedly sometimes put it, hahaha) might try to make a business out of it. But, it doesn't always have to be on a Perrin-esque or even Kirbster-esque scale, does it? A decent reef tank, stocked at levels typified by what I see on the Net, should run into real estate shortages in a few years.

You would HAVE to harvest. Heck with species like Xenia puertogalerae, real estate isn't even an issue. How many years have there been reef tanks in the US? How old are the coral colonies therein?

(Once more, with feeling....
"If everyone lit just oooooone little candle..." hehehe)

StillReefs & Ironlung.
My grow-out basins bump 80-plus Farenheit degrees when it really cooks (and man, in this country, does it ever, hahaha). Might explain the Helio slow-grow. I'll be checking on the reef-returned Helio colonies over the year for changes in growth rate, unless the next storm oblits them prior.

[billsreef]

Horge,
Many people in the US like to have large showy specimens or they are afraid to prop. I don't have any large specimens (I keep fragging them) and many people I talk to are amazed that I cut up corals. However, as time goes on more and more people are starting to frag over here.

On the Heliopora it would be of interest if you could post on the conditions it is found in on the reef, ie depth, habitat etc. I feel the closer we can make our systems to the typical habitat of a given coral the better our chances of success.

Kirbster,
My cabbage grows like a weed. BTW, how are you getting your tree softies to attach, that seems to be my biggest challenge.



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Bill

If damsels grew as big as sharks, the sharks would run in fear!
My dive photos (http://hometown.aol.com/billsreef/)
ICQ 56222784

[jdthomas]

I have a 40 breeder, 2-10gals, and a 25 for propagation. I am doing mainly leathers & polyps. My display tanks (75,180) are just to full of stuff to prop in there.
My question is about the lighting. What lighting do you use?? How many 'crops' do you get before the bulbs need to be changed?? Every time I try to figure it at a different angle, I come up with the same thing. Is is VERY difficult to show a profit on small-scale, artificial lit, captive propagation. The initial cost, electric cost, and maintenance costs, all eat up the price of the coral pretty quick. Faster growth needs higher intensity lighting, therefore more cost. I currently use MV on my 40, but the growth rate isnt as good as under the MH in my reef. I save money on bulbs & initial cost, but lose it all back in slow growth rate. I am trying various other setups on the other tanks. The 2-10gals are used just for testing lighting.
There has to be a sweet spot somewhere in terms of size/lighting/growth rate. Any ideas??

[Kirbster]

Bill,

I've come up with several ways after discovering superglue was useless on trees. The simplest is to fill a deli cup with rock rubble, drop the frag in, and wait a week. It usually ends up attached to a piece of rubble. I had some losses due to lack of current in the cups, so I changed methods recently.

I get a piece of rubble like an acropora skeleton branch or something similar and use a plastic zip-tie to firmly tie the frag against the piece of rubble. Then I put it in strong light and current, and I usually get attachement within a week.

What I'm having trouble with is Sinularia brassica. Can't get them to attach to anything but the smooth side of half-shells. I am going to start trying bridal veil to get them on rocks. Nobody wants them on shells.

KA :cool:

[horge]

billsreef:
Helios aren't actually too common wghere I snorkel, and are the worst topic for any sort of habitat-description, given the range of conditions they can adapt to. Fishermen do assure me they are plentiful on reefs far from shore.

Colonies found on near-shore reefs are typically dessert-plate sized, many-humped discs on near-vertical reef faces. I recorded temps from 79 to 84 deg F, over depths from 50cm to 3m (the limit of my snorkelling ablity, I'm afraid).

They seem to locate themselves in robust to severe water movement. Whether this is an indicator of preference, or a limiting factor on competitors I cannot hazard.

[Still Reefs]

Hey Bill and Kirbster,

I don't have too much experience with different tree softies but have done a little with Sinularia sp. I find that using bridal veil netting works best. I don't cover the whole cutting instead, like the cable tie method, I make a veil "band-aid" over the base of the cutting and tie it in a knot under the rock. Lay the cutting on the rock on its side then just tie it on. The veil covers a little more surface area than the cables ties while allowing space for covered polyps to extend.

Hope this helps! I like talking about prop methodology! :p


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Sean Bradley
Photographer : Still Reefs Photographic
Productions
Still Reefs' Home (http://stillherps.herpexchange.com/stillreefs
)

[IronLung]

i've had bad and good experiances with several leathers....cabbage seems to be very hardy when propping...have had lots of luck with colt...did allrite with toadstools...i think with the harder skinned leathers u can get away with gluing...using the veil on softer leathers is always good....i had alot of problems trying to section off a carnation a while back and ended up losing the nice piece...******* i am... :mad:

one method i'm am gonna try soon with colt corals will be to slice a section of the base then drill a hole on a piece of LR for the piece to sit in...then run a line through the colt and around the rock to hold the piece in place till attachment...i wonder if the dendros can take this much stress :confused:

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[goby]

Ironlung,

I have proped colts like this...only the LR alredy had holes in it... I tried everything..rubberbands, superglue, even fishing line sewed into the flesh of the colt.. and nothing would keep it stuck to the rock, eventually, out of frustration, I just dropped it in a hole in the LR.. a week later, I went to move it to try another method of attaching it, and when i picked it up, the rock came with it ;) I have another one that is in a rock right now, I'll let you know how well it attaches...

g
o
b
y


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The quest ( and the questions) continues...
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[Kirbster]

Iron,

The only problem I have had with the wedge-'em-in-a-hole method is apparent infections wiping out cuttings. I attribute this to the cut area being in a low-flow, somewhat stagnant area (the hole in the rock). I suppose this can be fixed by allowing the cutting to heal before cramming it into the rock.

KA :cool:

[Jeff C]

I am currently setting up my first reef tank and would love to know how I could get as much tank-raised stuff as possible. You all are on the right track as I know I would personally be willing to spend more money if necessary to obtain tank-raised species.

How would I go about buying corals (or fish for that matter) from any of you in about 6 months when I will be ready for some corals?

Jeff