Philosophical Question: What makes a coral aqua-cultured?

[slicko]

Reply to you both. Sure i can see it from that side also, professional aquaculture bussiness who do many areas will be completing life cycles due to quality control of the animal etc, im sure coral will get there one day as knowledge improves, processes improve etc, as far as it goes now the chop shops are far from professional aquaculture business’s. Can you show me a definition that makes coral chopping aquaculture?

 

[hart24601]

I don't think there are hard definitions, however I consider coral aquacultured when 100% of the coral being sold has been grown in captivity. No chunks of the original wild colony present - all skeleton is from 2 part/limewatwr/CaRx. Some sps, from the same original colony, has been in my local area for a decade plus and in hundreds of systems.

This is common for sps and softies, much more rare for many lps (not all of course) to be aquacultured in my definition above.

Not many animals can be cut and grown for decades like coral so I don't agree with the coral spawn being required. However I do agree with that definition for animals that can't be fragged, like clams. Acro Al in Australia is from what I know, the only person that has been able to close the lifecycle of clams and make truly aquacultured ones.

One could extend this question to other forms of life that don't need sexual reproduction to propagate. Few examples being hydras normally bud off asexually, and then we could get to bacteria which have conjugation but is very different than spawning.

 

[sde1500]

I buy a coral from where ever, someone's tank, the ocean, a retailer. I grow it out. I frag it, I grow the frags out. That is the life cycle. I have a coral piece in my tank right now that was broken off by a fish, I am watching it because I know it will eventually encrust and start growing on its own. What would you call that other than a natural life cycle completely in my tank? I'm curious why you are going out of your way to make sure to call them "chop shops" a term I've typically seen reserved to use as an insult towards shops that do nothing more than cut up and sell wild corals as frags.

Can you show me a definition that makes coral chopping aquaculture?

In my experience, I've found that when someone makes a statement and is asked to back that statement up with facts and data, either they can or they can't. If they can't, and counter by just asking the other side to provide what they were asked to provide, in this case the definition they were using, they have no real argument to stand on.

 

[Rispa]

To be fair the word aquaculture is younger than most of not all of us discussing it. What we are discussing is the actual definition. If you go back a few decades breeding most fish would be a miracle, much less keeping many of the coral varieties alive long enough to distribute them widely.

I do think that spawning coral is a safe bet because then the coral has definitely never been in the ocean whereas with fragging you have to take the sellers word for it.