Well I would really like to do the the right thing. I figured that they grew the corals and nipped a small piece off of an established colony in the store. I figured I would get a bunch grow them big and share with all you guys and girls. That was my plan. Getting different species so we all could have a variety. I guess i wanted to believe that’s what they do. If I had a business that’s what I would do. It is nice for us to be able to trade and buy from eachother, but that takes time. Any advise on how to keep them alive besides what I am doing? I am keeping them low in the tank and cutting back on the photo period. On a good note I fragged a few corals today so will have some available soon.
The end does not always justify the means.
There will always be someone that has to jump on and say, “it worked for me”. Doesn’t mean it is right or even that it will work most of the time. In the wild corals can be exposed to the tropical sun at low tide with no water for hours and hours. When the water comes up again in near perfect conditions in which the chemistry and water parameters have been for many centuries the polyps come out again and are healthy. This does not mean you can set a coral you just got out of the wild on your back porch for a couple of hours then set it in a tank with 50ppm nitrates.
Since this is a hobby dominated by newbies often the corals are not going into perfect conditions. How many people have wanted to try their first ever stony coral out, but a used and abused $10 frag online and killed it?
Dunk totally respect and admire your efforts. If you offer corals up for sale/trade and they don’t disappear in an instant on the DRC forums try DelValReefClub and NJRC. You can also call up DPA, and The Frazer Zoo and ask them what animals they have that are aquaculture. There are likely other stores, but I know these two at least buy locally truly home grown animals.
Make sure the animals you cut are based out(assuming stony) and growing before sale if you can. If you ever sell a stony coral frag and it bleaches white from the bottom then the tank it was put into has low alkalinity and it may have been sold a bit too fast.
Have you read Anthony Calfo’s book? Good read with tons of info on aquaculture.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:22, topic:4531”]
The end does not always justify the means.
There will always be someone that has to jump on and say, “it worked for me”. Doesn’t mean it is right or even that it will work most of the time. [/quote]
Ok Jon, We get it, but that was my experience i was sharing. But to flip it, there will always be people that jump in and say" the coral died because of where or who they bought it from".
And from the tone of your post it sounds like its a problem that i jumped in with my experience?
I “usually” start threads, and post positive comments… not just wait until somebody else shares, and then jump in, criticize, talk down to “newbies” and then preach about reading “books” and supporting the lfs. My tank doesn’t crash every time the seasons change, so maybe thats why i have luck keeping things alive.
“there’s always someone that has to jump in” yeah, it was me commenting positively…
play nice; differing opinions , no personal comments. sorta like the senate, except we’re knowledgable about something
“Newbies are morons and ruin the hobby” Not at all what I said John… I wasn’t talking down to anyone and not sure where you read that.
I’m sorry I’m not on the book burning band wagon, but I read a book I like, ran into someone else that seemed intelligent and may enjoy a good read as well and I shared. Don’t see the issue in it.
Tone is in your head not typed into the box. I typed the words you added the tone.
[quote=“saltcreep, post:24, topic:4531”]
My tank doesn’t crash every time the seasons change, so maybe thats why i have luck keeping things alive.[/quote]
Whose tank crashes every time the seasons change? I didn’t directly say it but part of my point was those with healthy aquariums, LIKE YOU, may have better luck then a newby aquarist. If a coral is used and abused before it gets to a newby aquirst it will not make it. If a coral is locally grown and extremely healthy before it goes into the aquarist it could have an energy reserve to live off of and give the aquarist time to figure out what is wrong.
I never said anything bad about you or newbies.
Well I guess it’s time for me to jump in here…
FIRST we are on a kick to get sponsors so we can continue to raise money to continue to feed people when they come to our meetings. So we can have a larger selection of corals to trade around as we no longer have to use frags from mine, Bill’s, John’s, & Ken’s tanks. So we can continue to grow our reputation in the community, and can continue to arrange good deals for our members.
For the record this particular sponsor came with very good reviews and a recommendation from a former respected officer of the club. I think all frags I have gotten from him are still doing well. Does he frag and ship too quickly? Maybe. Do we KNOW how long he waits before fragging a coral? No (with the exception of the 1 swap I’ve heard about) Has he provided excellent pricing on some unique corals that I haven’t seen locally? Yep.
I’ve read other boards that have had issues with a VERY prominent retailers clams - should I not ask them to sponsor us? We can’t base our selection on a few opinions, if there is an issue as a sponsor than it will be addressed - if someone doesn’t like the frags they bought off the WYSIWYG page than I can’t address that.
Dunk I wish you luck with your corals, hopefully they color up and do well for you, just keep ding what you’re doing, don’t make any drastic changes, and just let the corals rest and recover, fragging and shipping is very stressful for the animal.
I have been emailing them back and forth. I kind of think that there was a shipping delay which is what stressed them out more than normal. But any coral that looks bad will be replaced. They have handled it well. I will probably get a credit and order after these color a bit and I can identify them so we will see it was a total of 31 corals too.
Can’t we all just get along a BoNg ? lol
[quote=“dajohnson02, post:29, topic:4531”]
Can’t we all just get along a BoNg ? lol[/quote]
lmao
I thought we were getting along slap-stick
So the club is desperate for money heading in the hole and we need any sponsor we can get? I don’t think that is the case and I think we are so far from being desperate that we can afford to have some standards. That is all I am saying. I understand the club needs to fund itself, but I also know the clubs finances enough to know if we spent money on frags for the raffle we would still be headed in the positive direction. We don’t even need to do that though. I lined up a bunch from free frags for the next meeting 6 months ago.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:27, topic:4531”]
Do we KNOW how long he waits before fragging a coral? No (with the exception of the 1 swap I’ve heard about) [/quote]
Disagree, I could find photos of him taking animals out of boxes that came from a right from a wholesaler to a frag swap and photos of him chopping up non-photosynthetic corals and selling them to hobbyist improperly mounted. Not at one frag swap, but several. Also took three seconds on google to find more on this:
"it’s essentially a coral chop shop. He gets large wild caught colonies and hacks them into bits and ships them out the next day. I’ve seen photos of frags that look like they were cut the minute before going into the bag."http://www.carolinafishtalk.com/forum/general-saltwater-discussion/23585-mr-coral.html
“I am pretty sure that he just orders from Live Aquaria and starts cutting them up.”
" I really dont understand how Mr. Coral is still in business. There are plenty of negative reviews all over the web. "
Here are some reviews:
http://www.insiderpages.com/b/15248243962/mr-coral-frederick
One four star, five 1 star!
Just wanted to point out it wasn’t one person who disagrees with his practices. I know if my opinion was the only opinion on the matter it would simply be ignored.
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:27, topic:4531”]
Has he provided excellent pricing on some unique corals that I haven’t seen locally? Yep.[/quote]
When is the last time you were in The Hidden Reef, Pacific East Aquaculture, TFZ, Fish Bowl, or Bill’s? Honestly? Not trying to bust on you, but what stores have you been in recently?
Really not trying to pick fights with anyone or argue for the sake of arguing, but in my opinion:
- The club is doing well enough we could afford to no support 1 out of the 300 companies in the industry.
- The shop we are discussing is in fact a chop shop no matter how you define it. That isn’t an opinion of one opinionated reefer, but a statement echoed 1,000 times over. It is also scientific fact that corals are animals. The only thing that is my opinion is it is wrong to treat animals this way. It is up to the individual person to decide how they feel about this, but I don’t think it is wrong to share this information.
Hey Jon, I totally agree with you on this. If someone in the business decides that the best way to make money is to get a wild colony and chop it up and sell it real fast , that is not what I want to see happen to these beautiful corals nor do I want to see it continue to happen simply because The frags are cheap and I can get more for my money. I personally would rather take the same amount of money and spend it on a quality, hardy and well taken care of frag, even if it means that I will have gotten less frags for my money. The gratification comes from Knowing that i purchased a coral that has a much better chace of acclimatting to my system and hopefully was something grown in captivity and not removed from the ocean. Just my 2 cents.
well, i handled the mr coral gb and swore no more from him. they were just awful in customer service, but most of the corals i got from them are alive. so i decided to try him again. this time, i am gonna lose 4 outta 6. never again.
Paul…what types of coral didn’t make it?
2 acros, 2 mille,
pic of close to dead one next to setosa from mrc GB
just dead
2 dead
alive
I have three others that look dead too oh well. I’m gonna place an order for some other corals elsewhere. They are aquacultured and maricultured. Beautiful corals too. Looks like 9 dead out of 25 so far
In all fairness Paul, didn’t you tell me you could never keep acros alive in your system?
They were bad already. Either fully or almost bleached. I know I should be ok with acros. I have 20 other species thriving. On a good note one seems to be coloring up nicely. Might be the shaggy watermelon. Another is turning blue. One looked bleached from the start but has some blueish color and hasn’t changed. I hope some survive so far 4 got worse 2 got better and the rest stayed the same.
i did say that, but that was a while ago. things have much improved. take a look at the “2 dead” pic, the lg digi is doing very well over the past 6 weeks. i have a very small frag of purple bonsai that is finally beginning to grow, after 6 months. i also have a gr slimer now for 5 months and some montis growing very well over the past 2-4 months.
i also recognize what is total bleach out, way before they ever got into the tank, still in their own bags. i certainly own up to when i kill something after a couple days, but these corals arrived near dead.
[quote=“saltcreep, post:37, topic:4531”]
In all fairness Paul, didn’t you tell me you could never keep acros alive in your system?[/quote]
Damn, i guess that came out the wrong way! slap-stick Congrats on your success Paul :
:
guys, don’t give up on the frags until they’re completely covered in algae or coraline…whatever… i had a couple that were good as dead from frag raffle deliveries… they maintained a little bit of white bleached part that kept algae from growing. After 2 months or more they came back… and will be sure to make their way into future raffles!