Solomon Islands Acropora

[Nutramar Foods Verified Sponsor]

The Solomon Islands Acropora have great colorations and quality. These are collected from short supply chain, which eliminate inconsistent levels of care and increase survivability. We here at Quality Marine place the utmost importance on supply chains and are very proud to offer livestock from our Solomon Island SSC once again! If you are doing regular water changes with a quality salt like Tropic Marin, you should have no problem keeping all of the things the Acropora needs in balance until it gets very large indeed. We also suggest feeding all Acropora at least weekly. Nutramar's line of live algae blends are great for this.

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Hey @Nutramar Foods, you are run by quality marine, correct? I've been looking for melanesian/Australian bluethroat triggerfish, pyramid butterflies and pictillis anthias. When you get some in stock can you notify me so I can let my LFS know of their availability? Thanks

 

[Nutramar Foods Verified Sponsor]

Hey @Nutramar Foods, you are run by quality marine, correct? I've been looking for melanesian/Australian bluethroat triggerfish, pyramid butterflies and pictillis anthias. When you get some in stock can you notify me so I can let my LFS know of their availability? Thanks

Hello, I just sent you a message.

 

[ReefEco]

Hey there - from the photos these look to be wild collected colonies? If so, it is certainly a more sustainable choice to not buy these at all. There are simply an enormous selection of aquacultured and maricultured acropora corals out there to choose from, and with likely better color since they are already raised in aquarium lighting (assuming maricultured corals are eventually propagated in our tanks), and self-selected for their robustness in our systems. Locally maricultured corals present the same or better financial incentives for conservation and support to local communities as well. I just don't see a reason to wild collect corals anymore and offer them to the end user - new stock and colors to keep the supply chain dynamic can certainly still be fulfilled by taking a limited number of wild colonies as brood stock, and then mariculturing them - vastly reducing the impact on reefs over selling huge wild colonies directly to aquarists. It is disappointing to see huge pieces of the reef for sale like this

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Hey there - from the photos these look to be wild collected colonies? If so, it is certainly a more sustainable choice to not buy these at all. There are simply an enormous selection of aquacultured and maricultured acropora corals out there to choose from, and with likely better color since they are already raised in aquarium lighting (assuming maricultured corals are eventually propagated in our tanks), and self-selected for their robustness in our systems. Locally maricultured corals present the same or better financial incentives for conservation and support to local communities as well. I just don't see a reason to wild collect corals anymore and offer them to the end user - new stock and colors to keep the supply chain dynamic can certainly still be fulfilled by taking a limited number of wild colonies as brood stock, and then mariculturing them - vastly reducing the impact on reefs over selling huge wild colonies directly to aquarists. It is disappointing to see huge pieces of the reef for sale like this

I solely keep wild caught colonies and no exceptions. Far Less than %1 of reef ecosystem disappearance is caused by this hobby as a whole, and the reason I keep these corals is for their natural colors and growth which have often been selectively bred out of this hobby. Plus where else am I finding good-sized colonies? I'm not waiting 3 years for a favia frag to get as large as wild collected ones are on day 1

 

[ReefEco]

I solely keep wild caught colonies and no exceptions. Far Less than %1 of reef ecosystem disappearance is caused by this hobby as a whole, and the reason I keep these corals is for their natural colors and growth which have often been selectively bred out of this hobby. Plus where else am I finding good-sized colonies? I'm not waiting 3 years for a favia frag to get as large as wild collected ones are on day 1

We have different philosophies, clearly, LOL. And we have NO IDEA what the tipping point of wild collection is, given how quickly things impact reefs - half of the reefs in Australia could be wiped in one bleaching event, then who knows how much the tonnage of corals that were collected would impact their ability to recover. The patience and challenge to grow corals is what this hobby is about for me, plus not taking a single polyp of wild coral from the ocean for my beautiful tank : )

 

[TardWrangler]

I solely keep wild caught colonies and no exceptions. Far Less than %1 of reef ecosystem disappearance is caused by this hobby as a whole, and the reason I keep these corals is for their natural colors and growth which have often been selectively bred out of this hobby. Plus where else am I finding good-sized colonies? I'm not waiting 3 years for a favia frag to get as large as wild collected ones are on day 1

I would say a minuscule fraction of 1% is utilized. In fact I would argue there’s not even a measurable impact and people making hay over this are acting upon their own ignorance and not any sort of scientific facts or impact statement. The aquarium trades demand worldwide would be akin to removing a grain of sand off of a beach. It’s that small and insignificant

 

[ReefEco]

I'm sure you're not trying to call people ignorant for trying to protect reefs, LOL. That would be pure silliness. If you don't care as much to make a different choice, that's cool. I think that choice will be made for us in the next decade or two, given what we are seeing with regulation. UN projects "all of the world's reefs will bleach by the end of the century. By 2034, severe bleaching is expected to occur annually, at which point, recovery becomes inconceivable unless corals can adapt to higher temperatures." So in a decade if bleaching gets so bad, it is pretty easy to imagine that the sheer tonnage of coral collected could have an impact. And the alternatives are so easy...today. As an example of our impact - the aquarium trade almost collected Banggai Cardinals off the planet. From NOAA: "235 surveyed scientists felt the fish was at risk of extinction due to overexploitation of the marine livestock industry." Not quite a grain of sand. Corals are different, granted, but at risk from the same forces - and more. It was beyond easy to fill my 900g system with not a single coral from the wild...

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

I'm sure you're not trying to call people ignorant for trying to protect reefs, LOL. That would be pure silliness. If you don't care as much to make a different choice, that's cool. I think that choice will be made for us in the next decade or two, given what we are seeing with regulation. UN projects "all of the world's reefs will bleach by the end of the century. By 2034, severe bleaching is expected to occur annually, at which point, recovery becomes inconceivable unless corals can adapt to higher temperatures." So in a decade if bleaching gets so bad, it is pretty easy to imagine that the sheer tonnage of coral collected could have an impact. And the alternatives are so easy...today. As an example of our impact - the aquarium trade almost collected Banggai Cardinals off the planet. From NOAA: "235 surveyed scientists felt the fish was at risk of extinction due to overexploitation of the marine livestock industry." Not quite a grain of sand. Corals are different, granted, but at risk from the same forces - and more. It was beyond easy to fill my 900g system with not a single coral from the wild...

Don't remind me



Would be nice to see a day when reefs can sustainability thrive alongside sustainable fishing and collecting...

 

[Jamie7907]

Don’t forget to mention that Bangaii Cardinals are also an invasive species in other places and extremely easy to breed and repopulate their native area with if needed.

 

[ReefEco]

Don’t forget to mention that Bangaii Cardinals are also an invasive species in other places and extremely easy to breed and repopulate their native area with if needed.

Exactly. It is one of the good success stories, where aquaculture took over the demand and significantly decreased the impact on wild populations. Biota is making great strides in culturing many of the mainstay fish we use in our tanks. No reason we can't do the same thing with the majority of corals, and stop taking these huge colonies from the wild...

 

[Aquadude1]

I'm sure you're not trying to call people ignorant for trying to protect reefs, LOL. That would be pure silliness. If you don't care as much to make a different choice, that's cool. I think that choice will be made for us in the next decade or two, given what we are seeing with regulation. UN projects "all of the world's reefs will bleach by the end of the century. By 2034, severe bleaching is expected to occur annually, at which point, recovery becomes inconceivable unless corals can adapt to higher temperatures." So in a decade if bleaching gets so bad, it is pretty easy to imagine that the sheer tonnage of coral collected could have an impact. And the alternatives are so easy...today. As an example of our impact - the aquarium trade almost collected Banggai Cardinals off the planet. From NOAA: "235 surveyed scientists felt the fish was at risk of extinction due to overexploitation of the marine livestock industry." Not quite a grain of sand. Corals are different, granted, but at risk from the same forces - and more. It was beyond easy to fill my 900g system with not a single coral from the wild...

I am not trying to be rude at all, but the UN has not been accurate in their predictions. They fear monger as can be seen in that they always follow up their predictions with a request for more authority.

 

[Acanthurus12]

These look amazing! I’m going ask my LFS to get me some! I’m really excited about Solomon Islands regular availability again!

 

[ReefEco]

I am not trying to be rude at all, but the UN has not been accurate in their predictions. They fear monger as can be seen in that they always follow up their predictions with a request for more authority.

They are just that, predictions - not facts. But done in good faith by some very smart scientists who know more than we do. And what matters is the trajectory, which is undeniable...

 

[Aquadude1]

They are just that, predictions - not facts. But done in good faith by some very smart scientists who know more than we do. And what matters is the trajectory, which is undeniable...

I appreciate your care for the reefs and I think we both want to see them thrive. I think we just trust different sources. I would not work in absolutes in a field where people have so much to gain financially though.

 

[TardWrangler]

They are just that, predictions - not facts. But done in good faith by some very smart scientists who know more than we do. And what matters is the trajectory, which is undeniable...

I don’t agree with your assertion that those people know more than “we” do. Maybe you’re willing to cede that ground but I am not. We don’t know each other

The trajectory is not undeniable, I’m denying it

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I'm sure you're not trying to call people ignorant for trying to protect reefs, LOL. That would be pure silliness. If you don't care as much to make a different choice, that's cool. I think that choice will be made for us in the next decade or two, given what we are seeing with regulation. UN projects "all of the world's reefs will bleach by the end of the century. By 2034, severe bleaching is expected to occur annually, at which point, recovery becomes inconceivable unless corals can adapt to higher temperatures." So in a decade if bleaching gets so bad, it is pretty easy to imagine that the sheer tonnage of coral collected could have an impact. And the alternatives are so easy...today. As an example of our impact - the aquarium trade almost collected Banggai Cardinals off the planet. From NOAA: "235 surveyed scientists felt the fish was at risk of extinction due to overexploitation of the marine livestock industry." Not quite a grain of sand. Corals are different, granted, but at risk from the same forces - and more. It was beyond easy to fill my 900g system with not a single coral from the wild...

To be honest, if you feel that this is true, and you probably are. The best thing we can do as reefers is to genetically bank as many wild corals as we can. Jake Adams did a presentation on this. "But unfortunately, no one collects the brown corals..." which in most cases are the bread and butter of the reef. In our tanks the corals we have are mostly clones that have been aquacultured to the Nth degree. If you truly are concerned with saving corals you should collect a small portion of as many wild corals as possible, including the "Brown" ones. So if and when you would need to repopulate a reef you have a genetically diverse group to chose from that hopefully could be possibly hardier from the on average terrible conditions (non stable swings and parasite resistance) that we as hobbyists subject our corals through.

 

[ReefEco]

To be honest, if you feel that this is true, and you probably are. The best thing we can do as reefers is to genetically bank as many wild corals as we can. Jake Adams did a presentation on this. "But unfortunately, no one collects the brown corals..." which in most cases are the bread and butter of the reef. In our tanks the corals we have are mostly clones that have been aquacultured to the Nth degree. If you truly are concerned with saving corals you should collect a small portion of as many wild corals as possible, including the "Brown" ones. So if and when you would need to repopulate a reef you have a genetically diverse group to chose from that hopefully could be possibly hardier from the on average terrible conditions (non stable swings and parasite resistance) that we as hobbyists subject our corals through.

I always find it interesting when someone hurls insults rather than having a respectful, kind debate - it usually means they have no good points to make. And it certainly demonstrates the type of person one is - which is likely the same kind of person that thinks taking huge colonies of acropora off the reef is not impacting it at all, LOL. I do like the idea of genetic banking, but - to be honest - your suggestion doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that we should cut down corals to save them. It is a fallacy to think hobbyists tanks would be used ultimately as some force for repopulating reefs. Unless we can divine the provenance of each piece of coral, no conservation group or government entity is going to accept random corals that might be invasive at a particular location.

When I worked at the Steinhart Aquarium in education (I guess my ignorance started there, LOL) - we learned a lot about propagating corals for the 250,000 gallon reef, and the strictures of international collection that I can only assume would be stricter in reverse - trying to deposit possibly non-native corals on their reefs. But if you want to really create a genetic bank, I think what is more useful is for collectors to sell 100 frags or maricultured colonies of 100 different corals into the hobby, which would create a much deeper and more distributed genetic bank, instead of selling much fewer huge colonies that may or may not be further distributed into the hobby to create that genetic reservoir.

I’m happy to have a friendly debate about this topic - one of the things I like about reef2reef (when you are lucky enough to come across someone who can disagree with kindness), but every time you try to dismiss an argument by claiming someone is ignorant, rather than having the debate, it is not only pretty funny, but it is most likely pretty thick with irony.

Happy Reefing

Also wondering why @Nutramar Foods hasn't chimed in on their own thread, LOL!

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I always find it interesting when someone hurls insults rather than having a respectful, kind debate - it usually means they have no good points to make. And it certainly demonstrates the type of person one is - which is likely the same kind of person that thinks taking huge colonies of acropora off the reef is not impacting it at all, LOL. I do like the idea of genetic banking, but - to be honest - your suggestion doesn’t make a lot of sense to me that we should cut down corals to save them. It is a fallacy to think hobbyists tanks would be used ultimately as some force for repopulating reefs. Unless we can divine the provenance of each piece of coral, no conservation group or government entity is going to accept random corals that might be invasive at a particular location.

When I worked at the Steinhart Aquarium in education (I guess my ignorance started there, LOL) - we learned a lot about propagating corals for the 250,000 gallon reef, and the strictures of international collection that I can only assume would be stricter in reverse - trying to deposit possibly non-native corals on their reefs. But if you want to really create a genetic bank, I think what is more useful is for collectors to sell 100 frags or maricultured colonies of 100 different corals into the hobby, which would create a much deeper and more distributed genetic bank, instead of selling much fewer huge colonies that may or may not be further distributed into the hobby to create that genetic reservoir.

I’m happy to have a friendly debate about this topic - one of the things I like about reef2reef (when you are lucky enough to come across someone who can disagree with kindness), but every time you try to dismiss an argument by claiming someone is ignorant, rather than having the debate, it is not only pretty funny, but it is most likely pretty thick with irony.

Happy Reefing

Also wondering why @Nutramar Foods hasn't chimed in on their own thread, LOL!

Just to make a few points to your reply. Solomon Islands has significant mariculture farms, which maybe the source of these corals, but I am not positive. If you haven’t, check out Jake Adams youtube videos on his time there and the contributions he made. When a collector sells a colony to a wholesaler, what you are describing is what the wholesaler does. They will take a colony and cut it up into frags and sell those. They make much more profit that way. I really don’t know what your definition of "Huge" is, but a colony does have to ship and tend to be on a smaller side comparatively.
When the temperatures in Florida hit the record highs this past summer, what did the the conservationists do? They dove in the water and "cut down" many corals to save them... I don't believe it has to be a fallacy that hobbyist can help save the reefs, in fact many techniques and equipment that we use, have been adopted by conservation groups and scientists. That has been instrumental in letting them get as far as they have got. As far as hobbyist or aquarists directly repopulating the reef... No you can't grow out a colony in your tank and put it in the ocean and expect it to thrive. It might, but that would not be very efficient.
Keeping non-native corals off reefs, you would be able though to tell provenance of the coral through genetic testing.
Reef conservationist only have so many resources, where as if you think about the reefing hobby as a whole, our resources are many. If you really want to save the reefs, there has to be a bridge between the two.
One of the ways conservationist repopulate the reef is to have genetically diverse colonies spawn together and that offspring hopefully will be more resistant to temperature and disease. But again, their resources are limited and their priorities lie with the most threatened. But what if the hobbyists started to grow out the lesser threatened species or grew out corals that where in an area that where in a predicted heat zone. Then if and when those species where in danger, you could send a frag of that coral to a conservator to be spawned. You could even have a world wide register of who has what coral and its present state. But that would only work if you have genetically diverse wild collected corals.
As far as if hobbyists are a threat to coral reefs? I believe there are much bigger threats that destroy more reefs than our hobby ever will. But it is much easier to single out the minority than try to solve the bigger issues.

 

[ReefEco]

Maricultured corals will almost always have a cement disk on which they grow - these have nothing, and it was my first question in the post, which @Nutramar Foods hasn't answered. And these are significantly larger than any maricultured coral I have ever seen - these are hacked off wild colonies, I'm 97% sure.

I applaud your hopes that hobbyists could become a source for coral restoration, but it just isn't realistic for us to supply corals en masse. The logistical cost of shipping and testing individual corals from our tanks to make sure they are placed within the correct genetic dynasty of the reef will be a hurdle that reef conservation will never be able to overcome - since, as you say, reef conservationists have limited resources unfortunately. Most of the reef seeding efforts at scale have involved ex situ coral settlement on substrates (California Academy of Sciences, SECORE, and in Australia as well) - usually small spiked or otherwise shaped media that when scattered on reefs they have the best chance of lodging in a crevice and overcoming otherwise random storm distribution. By doing this, they can control in a lab the origin of the coral, seed thousands of media at a time, and distribute to a reef at scale. While more localized, small scale restoration of actual planting of coral frags has been done, I would seriously doubt that it would ever make a real impact compared to the media seeding. Some mariculture farms I've seen also have a practice of replanting wild reefs with a percentage of their farmed colonies, to give back.

There are certainly larger-scale effects on reefs than collection, but again, we don't know the tipping point - an important concept in ecosystem collapse. Bleached corals sometimes can recover, but if 1/4 of that coral has been hacked off to sell to us, that might be the difference in whether it recovers or not. We don't know. And multiply that effect over a couple thousand corals they collect in a year, with the increasing pressures from temperature stress, acidification, and pollution - it is I think willfully naive to think it would never be a contributor. Bleaching events have increased from 8% of reefs PER YEAR, to now 31% of reefs PER YEAR in the last 40 years. An undeniable trajectory. So, why take the chance? There are readily available often better alternatives, as aquacultured corals usually have better color retention, fewer pests, and are already adapted to aquarium life. That's the point. There are a couple billion cars on the road, and if everyone had the philosophy that it doesn't matter what they do individually because there are larger scale forces at work, we wouldn't get anywhere. But, imagine if everyone had the philosophy that getting a more efficient car or an electric car was important and could make a difference (and everyone could afford it and electricity was generated with renewables) - the effect would be real change. It does matter what we do, each of us - and we are able to make the better choice, such as not buying these wild cut colonies. And if someone is too impatient to grow out smaller corals and wants instant gratification, they are in the wrong hobby, LOL.