Is there Lab made corals ?!

[Arturs Millers]

Hello guys im new in all this reef staff have my aquarium running for 5-6month now.. one day i was looking on my corals and was wondering where do they come from because some of the corals have wierd colors like rainbow montipora my question is do they live in ocean reefs or is it some labratory breed !?

I know it sounds stupid its allowed to laught !

 

[Joeganja]

I think a lot of it comes from morphing under certain lighting. Especially with acroporas where certain lights have them produce a certain color spectrum. There's also grafting where two pieces of coral will collide with each other me just grow as one. I'm gonna go ahead and say most if not all coral is caught from the ocean and then it's morphed under different lights. This piece was a wild caught chalice.

 

[bios]

As you know corals are animals and they try to use all the strategies to catch food
So if you take a scolymia that are all wild caught you will see that depending on behavior and food, ie zooplankton, and light Waves , they assume best colorations to survive , attrack zoopl. And use light Waves available at the deep they Leave
Same is valid for all others corals
Human activity to modify or enances colors , using
lights or feed ,Is only for Our pleasure

 

[PatW]

There are corals that are grown in captivity. They are generally labeled aquaculture.


Corals in the wild can be quite colorful especially when placed under strong blue lighting which causes certain corals to fluoresce.

Corals reproduce in two ways, I believe. One is just by simple growth. A part or frag of the coral can be removed, placed in a decent environment to make a new colony. These new colonies are identical to the old ones. I think you can get a rare sport by this method. But you will get nothing like the variety you can get by sexual reproduction.

Corals can reproduce sexually. Corals spawn at certain times of the year and under certain conditions. The corals release clouds of male and female gametes that find each other and fuse. The new coral larvae are planktonic for some time before they settle on the reef to form new colonies. I don't know that anyone has ever successfully spawned corals and gotten new colonies by doing this.

Most coral producers, frag their corals. They buy wild caught colonies, grow them and frag them. Obviously, wild corals that are vividly colored command a premium price. Of course, irresponsible collecting can deplete native stocks. Some areas handle their coral resources more responsibly than others. I think in Fiji, they often collect just frags of the wild caught corals. They place these selected frags in ocean farms and grow them to colonies, mariculture. They sell the resulting colonies to the hobbiest market. Obviously, they can collect colorful frags and sell colonies on a value added basis.

 

[Arturs Millers]

thanks guys for replays ! its just all this reefing if so fun and all corals are so beautiful so i was expecting that they breed them someone ! like how they do with fish breed special strains and so on!

 

[Redbarnreefer]

I don't know that anyone has ever successfully spawned corals and gotten new colonies by doing this.

ORA pocillipora will spawn in an aquarium, but thats the only coral I've seen/know has done it in captivity. It's crazy to see a SPS pop out of nowhere on the other side of the aquarium!