Coral spawning?

razorskiss · Aug 10, 2022

So my day job is as a developmental biologist and I've always been curious about applying some of our techniques (we specialize in high resolution timelapse microscopy and mathematical analysis of developing embryos) to studying coral embryogenesis as a fun side project since there's not a ton of literature on the topic out there. I know some labs are able to induce spawning reliably in the lab but I'm wondering if there are any species known to spawn easily in hobby tanks or any guides / articles on the topic? Not really the main goal of my hobby tank but would be a fun endeavor.

ISpeakForTheSeas · Aug 10, 2022

I don’t know of any that are particularly easy to get spawning (coral spawns are still actually fairly rare events in the hobby, though the do happen from time to time). I do know that the Horniman Project Coral has some great info on coral spawning, and there are a few hobbyists working on similar projects now. From what I’ve seen, it seems currently that you either need to have excellent conditions for the corals and be lucky, or you need to pretty intensively replicate the environment those corals are found in naturally in order to get them spawning. The Project Coral I referred to above has a great document about how they basically did just that for four Acropora spp. (see the link below).

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onlinelibrary.wiley.com

With more research, we might be able to find some less intensive ways to inducing spawning in corals in the future, but, for now, (to my knowledge) we don’t know what exactly is actually needed to induce spawning in corals (i.e. we don’t what the key factors are), so this is the best we can do for now.

Project Coral - Horniman Museum and Gardens

Project Coral is our ground-breaking multi-year research project, which has revolutionised the study of sexual reproduction of corals.

www.horniman.ac.uk

Cynarina lacrymalis spawning project & setup.

Hello there! I' preparing this thread for a project I plan to start this spring, which will be a spawning attempt for the coral Cynarina* lacrymalis. C. lacrymalis is a broadcast spawning species that begins oogenesis & spermatogenesis in August-September, after which they release eggs & sperm...

www.reef2reef.com