Wild vs aquaculture coral

[cdw79]

I've been reading up on Indo gold torches recently and have been learning about the seemingly huge contrast in hardiness of wild / maricultured specimens compared to fully aquacultured ones. It got me thinking, what other types of coral have a similar difference in care levels between wild and captive bred specimens? Are there any species that you would never buy knowing they are wild? While I always try to get aquacultured coral when I can, it would be nice to learn more about which wild collected species are no-go's and which could be kept reasonably successfully.

 

[Doctorgori]

I remember gonipora used to be certain death but I don’t know if it’s because of a sorta “domestic drift” hardiness wherein captive species overtime develop its own hardiness to captivity
or
it’s because we just got smarter keeping them

 

[lynn.reef.nerd]

If you want something to listen to for fun. This was a recent video.

 

[HudsonReefer2.0]

Always a bigger risk w wild corals. Health color and pests. I know if I was in Australia I’d have a coral Qt system just to treat and bake the acropora. The availability and prices are insane. Cairns.

 

[gibec]

I remember gonipora used to be certain death but I don’t know if it’s because of a sorta “domestic drift” hardiness wherein captive species overtime develop its own hardiness to captivity
or
it’s because we just got smarter keeping them

well... I know we didnt get smarter... so we can scratch that one off.

 

[cdw79]

Is maricultured coral realistically any "better" than wild caught stuff, bar the obvious lessened environmental impact?

As I understand, some species like Scolys, Elegance, Acanthophyllia, etc don't propagate very well so wild is the only option. Do these / any other similarly wild-exclusive species have notably mediocre success rates? Trying to get a sense of what I should be avoiding / asking further questions about

 

[jfoahs04]

Is maricultured coral realistically any "better" than wild caught stuff, bar the obvious lessened environmental impact?

As I understand, some species like Scolys, Elegance, Acanthophyllia, etc don't propagate very well so wild is the only option. Do these / any other similarly wild-exclusive species have notably mediocre success rates? Trying to get a sense of what I should be avoiding / asking further questions about

I don't know that, apart from the environmental impact, maricultured is all that much better. A maricultured coral will at least have shown the ability to survive being manipulated/cut/moved by humans if it's successfully growing, but it's still fully conditioned to thriving in an actual ocean environment and will have the same drawbacks to adapting to our tanks.

I can't speak for elegance or scolys, but my only wild harvested corals (I won them in a giveaway - I generally opt for aquacultured if I'm buying) are hammers (not the walling variety) and several different acans. These are relatively hardy by nature and they have thrived in my system. I'm a lot more skeptical of indo torches, wild harvested acros, walling euphyllia, etc.

 

[Reefing102]

I remember elegance used to be that way.

As for mariculture, I think it’s the same as wild caught as they’re still grown in the ocean. Just less of an impact

 

[MONTANTK]

Virtually any maricultured coral is going to be more challenging than aquacultured. Maricultured is really just a coral farm but in the wild