Receiving wild or maricultured Acropora

[BradB]

I am thinking about ordering a large box of maricultured Acropora at the airport, similar to via wholesaler. I have a supplier in mind, but would appreciate hearing other suggestions or from anyone in the Cleveland area crazy enough to go in on this. I'd house, cut and grow the Acropora for a few months, sell off most of it as frags. All goes well, I will get several nice new types of Acros at a reasonable cost.

Here is the plan right now:
1) Set up an isolated Rubbermaid 100 gallon with water, heater, pumps and about 200 PAR of LED lighting.
2) Place order and pick up at airport
3) Rinse each coral in saltwater (to remove slime, etc), discard rinse water, place coral in Rubbermaid
4) Observe for 1 week, fragging anything that shows signs of die off
5) Dip and frag colonies, transfer to frag tank in main system

As I understand it, maricultured colonies are under full 2000 PAR sunlight before being put into total darkness for 48 hours. Is going straight to around 200 PAR the best option? Should I have more light? Should I start with less and ramp up over time?

I keep my reef cool, 25C/77F. Should my first system be the temperature? Or warmer to minimize stress (unless I get Tonga, which should be cooler).

Anything that comes in can (and probably will) have a significant amount of pests and parasites. Is it best to ignores these at first to let the coral recover from shipping? Or dip first? Or use several dips, gentler ones on arrival, and harsher after recovery? 1 week is probably not enough to 100% guarantee my current tank stays pest free (even with a dip between tanks), but maintaining 2 separate Acropora water quality systems is difficult and expensive. Would I be even better off with 3 separate systems - pre-dip shipping recovery, post-dip quarantine, main system?

Am I better off fragging the corals immediately? Even going tank to tank, full colonies never seem to do as well as frags, and fragging seems relatively low stress.

What is the best size to frag corals? I am sick of people selling 1/8th inch specs of dust on a frag plug, but I do intend to grow these for months before trying to sell them. I am thinking of an initial fragging to 1 inch pieces mounted on plugs, then cut them in half (or more) as they start to grow.

 

[erky]

I've been down this road a few times and you should expect some colonies to not make it. Just plain and simple shipping a animal that is comfortable in the water on a plane will get you some stressed out corals.

My process is such, get to the airport the second the box arrives, get it some and have water/QT setup already. open all bags and get them in the water asap. If any corals are not looking great get some iodine dip ready this will attempt to get them to recover. Wait 3-5 days before actually bayer dipping the coral, they are already stressed and whatever makes it will thank you. Get you alk as stable as possible in the qt system you have, test it multiple times a day if you can, this is the thing that will make or break your cheaper colonies.

When you are ready to dip, try and save the acro crabs that are in the colonies, these little guys will kill each other when put into the same container so keep that in mind.

Dip, rinse, iodine, rinse and place in tank water, this seems like over kill but it isn't. Wild colonies that I have purchased in the past haven't been covered like people think, the majority of pests that I have found are stars/crabs/and worms (not flat) If you can cut off the concrete base that is going to save you a ton of headaches in the future. I have found that they leach po4 even from being in the open ocean. Cutting that off is also going to allow the pests that live there to be eliminated faster also.

Ive done this 4-5 times, let me know what you are thinking and if you need any assistance.

maybe expect 20-25% dye off this time of year.

 

[29bonsaireef]

Definitely will need more then 200 par IMO. MH or T5 is the best lighting for QT mariculture or wild sps. They tend to have a higher death rate under LEDs. I would dip all the corals right away. I mix Interceptor, Flatworm eXit and iodine and leave them for a few minutes in this. If possible cut the corals of the base rocks and put them on fresh tiles or plugs.

 

[BradB]

How much PAR would you recommend? Would you go full blast on arrival or ramp up? Have you done this before?

I still have halide equipment, so going that route would be cheap, but I am skeptical the technology used to generate the light is relevant. If you said coral reacts badly to 450nm, which is most of the PAR in LEDs and not MH, that would be more believable. The current selection of LEDs and MH offer a variety of spectrums. Corals will eventually end up under LEDs.

Corals will be cut off the base rocks (why do they even ship these?) and put on fresh tiles and plugs. But should I do this on arrival or later?

 

[jda]

I mostly order deep waters and other smooth skinned stuff, so take this for what it is worth... mostly wild.

I have the best luck under 750+ PAR of 6500k or 10K metal halides. They were getting a lot of daylight where they came from.

I do not dip them upon arrival - this stresses them further. Once they start to grow, then I dip them. I have a totally separate system for this, so no risk of contamination. Wild stuff collected from a reef has not turned up any nasty hitchhikers for me. Mari stuff is where the flatworms, bugs, etc. are more of a risk.

They will not do much for a while, but when they start to grow, they can drop alk in no time. You really need to be testing a lot and be ready to ramp up your addition method. I have to turn my CaRx nearly off when I get some, but two months later, it is back to full blast again.

The Mari stuff that you will get has been around and likely seen before. They mari the same corals time and again. They pick them to be more hardy. You will not likely find any "new" color morphs, but you also do not have the death risk of wild.

 

[jda]

I do not want to get into a lighting debate, but there is still more blue spectrum in a Metal Halide than there is in most LED fixtures... they just also have the rest of the colors as well as UV and IR. The spectrum is actually full and wide and acropora do better under it almost universally.

 

[jda]

Oh, lastly... If you want to sell frags off of Mari colonies, then they need to chunky. People can get a whole colony for $30 sometimes and they are not usually unique, so if they are not an inch or two with a few branches, then it is hard to get enough for them to make a lot of money.

 

[OnPointCorals Verified Sponsor]

Keep us updated as you go. I'm very interested how it turns out for you.

I have picked up a number of maricultured colonies this past year. Honestly haven't had a ton of luck. Have had a 50% survival rate and out of that only a couple have turned into something worth looking at. It's a smallish sample size so not much to get out of it.

 

[Fishfinder]

Are you just looking for a challenge? Or you trying to cut cost? Or want to find something new?

 

[BradB]

I mostly order deep waters and other smooth skinned stuff, so take this for what it is worth... mostly wild.

I have the best luck under 750+ PAR of 6500k or 10K metal halides. They were getting a lot of daylight where they came from.

I do not dip them upon arrival - this stresses them further. Once they start to grow, then I dip them. I have a totally separate system for this, so no risk of contamination.

So deepwater goes under 750+ PAR? That's a lot more than I was planning.

You have a separate system, but how long do they stay in the separate system? How long until they move to your main system?

 

[BradB]

Keep us updated as you go. I'm very interested how it turns out for you.

I have picked up a number of maricultured colonies this past year. Honestly haven't had a ton of luck. Have had a 50% survival rate and out of that only a couple have turned into something worth looking at. It's a smallish sample size so not much to get out of it.

I will keep everyone posted, but I don't plan to move fast. I might do this in a few weeks, but it might be next winter.

As far as success, suppose I buy $1000 for 20 corals, and 10 die shortly after arrival, 8 are vanilla stuff I can get cheap at frag swaps and 2 something special. 8 colonies = 40 frags, sold at $10 each for the vanilla ones = $400, and 10 special frags at $40 each = $400. So I am out $200 and a lot of time but gain a lot of experience. Obviously this isn't best case or worst case, but somewhat pessimistic.

 

[BradB]

Are you just looking for a challenge? Or you trying to cut cost? Or want to find something new?

Yes, yes and yes. I've been in this hobby almost 20 years now, and never tried anything like this. An alternative to picking up something everyone has at a good price at a frag swap, or getting something really unique from a high end vendor at a ridiculous cost.

 

[jda]

It can be a year, or more (or never) until something goes into my display. If the stuff is ho-hum, then I trade it. The next two that I am going to put in there are a rosaria and loripes that I got in 2016 and they are finally doing something. The last one was a plana that I had die back to a small nub, but more than a year later it is fantastic. They were wild.

The biggest issue with these is that they are young colonies. Most people can get them good enough flow... it is a frag tank and should not have sand. Lighting is a big issue. Getting them stable and consistent alk and calcium is another big issue. MH with all of the reflection and facets are most similar to where they came from. The unfortunate truth is that most people never get to where they can grow a majority of stuff to this size, so they are already behind. The even more unfortunate truth is that most of them do not even know that colonies are different than frags, but they think that what they did as frags will scale and it will all be the same. If you can grow and handle real acropora colonies, then you are ahead of most folks and should be OK.

 

[tripdad]

My suggestion is to order in a single wild colony from a vendor to test your ability to keep it thriving. As jda has said they are not like anything else. That way you can proceed only after your having some luck. I currently have a wild Aculeus in the first weeks in my system and fingers crossed, so far it's happy. P.S. it's definitely different, special? time will tell. It could be ho hum, who knows. Good luck.

 

[Auto-pilot]

Did this ever happen??? I'm kinda interested in any results

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I use a 100 gallon Rubbermaid for collecting wild and Mari stuff, but I use two 400w radiums on it. I am interested if he did this too. Most never end up attempting it but I find they come in much better condition when ordered straight from the source than when picking individual pieces from vendors or wholesalers who most of the time don’t keep them in tanks that suit their needs.