Someone local who can help

[eric.battani]

Has anyone local every grown corals from natural sunlight? i use to be real big into growing veg plants to sell and the saltwater hobby was just a hobby, i started out with a 29 nano, now i have a new 125 tank to set up. Well i use to grow around 10,000 plants a year but i got tired of it and tore down my large greenhouse and got a smaller energy saving type, so if anyone wants some tomatoe plants i have only grown about 3000 this year. Now this summer my new greenhouse will be empty once the plants are moved out but i would like to try to grow some corals in it after that. I would like to talk to someone about this. Pro's and con's. Now i know my main problem will be cooling the water but i have vents that open automatic on what ever temp i set them to open and close. One of my worries is will the corals get to much light and turn brown?
Mostly the reason i want to do this for, is not for long term but just to help me get a good start on corals for my new 125 tank so that it wont seem so bare when i start placing coral frags, instead i want to place coral colonies. If anyone has any pointers or ideas let me know thanks.

 

[laytonp]

Sorry I can't provide any assistance on the coral growth but I am interested in your grow operation. I know that sounds bad. We previously did the same but smaller scale and only organic. Do you have a website? Would love to chat sometime.
I would also be interested in the growth of corals. I have seen some people do skylights to light a tank but they were supplemented with artificial

 

[NicoleC]

There's a couple of folks in Los Angeles with large outdoor coral propagation systems. Indeed, cooling is a key concern, as is heating sometimes. Our sun is hot and direct here, but it's nowhere near tropical; I would think shallow water corals would be fine. Deep water corals... they might need some shade, but shade cloth is an easy remedy.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

Philip Root had a coral farm operation in Birmingham several years ago. If I recall correctly, he was using shade cloth a lot.

Here's an interesting video podcast by American Reef Video about a coral farming in a greenhouse:

Coral Farming 102

 

[eric.battani]

So far, from what i have read, cooling is the hardest task. I think i might have found a way to do that will little effort. I plan on digging a trench about 2 ft down and how every far i can till i give out, and lay down 1/2 inch plex pipe and cover it up with the dirt. Then placing a pump in the tank and pump water into the plex pipe and let the ground cool the water down before it retuns back into the tank. the gorund usally stays at 54F or so i have read and i think that as lond as i use a timer on the pump that this may work. Any ideas? input?

Sorry I can't provide any assistance on the coral growth but I am interested in your grow operation. I know that sounds bad. We previously did the same but smaller scale and only organic. Do you have a website? Would love to chat sometime.
I would also be interested in the growth of corals. I have seen some people do skylights to light a tank but they were supplemented with artificial

sorry no website. i wanted to go organic but after looking at costs, i said forget it. I don't use chemicals on my plants but we do use lots of horse and goat manure in are garden. maybe i will see you at the NARC meeting and we can talk then.

 

[NicoleC]

You're going to have to go lower than 2' for the ground to be 54F. You have to go down about 25' to avoid seasonal fluctuations, which you will probably have to do to make it work during the summer. You can find graphs and charts on the geothermal heating web sites to get specifics on what temperature at what depth in this region, but IIRC, the average ground temperature at about 15' is 65F in this area but may swing up to 10 degrees at that depth. That's a ballpark though -- check the tables.

For a temporary or small system, a chiller would probably be more appropriate, and night even be more energy efficient than a pump that can push that much head.

 

[slowavy]

I have a 30gal. tank set in front of a south facing window. The light is stong enough to grow candy cane and tabling monophora but to strong for mushrooms or other low light coral. Daytime over heating is a problem that I solved by conecting this tank to a 20 gal. sump with a fan and a 92gal. tank also with a 20gal. sump. This water volume stablizes the day night temperature swings . The whole set up is in the 78 degree air conditioned house which is critical in the summer. I think stablizing the water temperature by having a large water volume worked for me.

 

[Dave3112]

As far as cooling goes a good sized fan blowing across the top of the water would give you great evaporative cooling results. Depending on what size grow out tank you have in the green house a couple of standard box fans would work well. You will have a lot of evaporation tough and therefore have to have lots of make up water on hand. A blue shade cloth (maybe a tarp?) would work if you needed one. I don't really think you will need one, except maybe for the first couple of weeks until the corals acclimate to natural light. The sun is much "weaker" here than near the equator. I can assure you of that I never ever get sun burned here. Got burned fairly quickly when I was in Guam a few years ago.