(Reprinted from Marine Fish Monthly October 1997, with some minor changes/corrections to update it. This article includes a large section on Propagating green star polyps - clavularia, how your marine aquarium society can conduct a reef aquarium tour and a report on Martin Moe's adventures in raising orchid dottybacks.)
by Tom Miller
Would you like to make a profit with your hobby, or maybe just be able to support your "reef habit"? This month we'll look at how you can easily grow your own green stuff - green star polyps that is. I'll also feature the how-to's of growing other corals periodically in future columns. This month we'll also briefly overview the process of setting up a self guided reef aquarium tour to promote your local marine society, reef awareness, conservation and propagation. A reef tour would also be a great way to start a marine aquarium society in your area if you don't have one yet. But first, I'd like to update you on just a few highlights from the Western Marine Conference that I just got back from in Las Vegas on July 18th to 20th.
The weather outside was sizzling! So were the speakers and topics. The best show in town may well have been Martin Moe who actually sang at the Gold Coast Hotel, Casino and Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada! This guy has one-up on Elvis, I tell you. He's always wanted to do this. He fulfilled his lifetime dream by singing the courting song of the orchid dottyback (pseudochromis fridmani). He discovered this unique ritualistic "song" by watching and "listening" very closely to a pair of these mating fish. The male dances about coaxing the female, "singing" to her to come into his den. After she lays the eggs and he fertilizes them, she is chased from the den and not allowed to return. He tends the eggs for several days, helping them hatch out. Martin showed a video of the courting, hatching and rearing which was fantastic and made it look like "even you could do it." His new book "Breeding the Orchid Dotty-back" is fantastic for anyone interested in breeding ANY marine aquarium fish. The book will be out this fall. The audio quality of the video he showed us must not have been quite good enough to hear the male fish's illusive courtship song so Martin had to sing it for us. It goes something like this: "Come on a come on a to myyy house. Come on a come on a and I'll give a you some cannndyyy. Come on a come on a and I'll give a you evvveryyy thing." It works! After a half hour of this song and dance she can't resist! Martin Moe's on-stage performance alone was worth the 950 mile round trip drive to Vegas.
Joyce Wilkerson talked about raising clownfish, revealing several surprises. The information was very interesting, entertaining and helpful. She also has a new book coming out this fall: "Clownfish" A Guide to Their Captive Care, Breeding and Natural History. It is declared as the first simplified guide to keeping and breeding the beguiling clownfish. I look forward to seeing more hobbyists raising marine fish at home.
Charles Delbeek showed beautiful slides of the Pacific coral reefs of Palau. He showed fantastic slides of the place he works, the Waikiki Aquarium. Did you know that the oldest coral at the aquarium is a goniopora that has been kept for over twenty years!? They are also transplanting black coral cuttings back onto the reef where it has been decimated by tourists. This hobby could be beneficial to the coral reefs.
Julian Sprung talked about his trip to Israel and the Red Sea with Peter Wilkens. He showed slides of a coral reef observatory called Coral World. They were keeping stony corals exceptionally well under just three standard output flourescent reef tubes. The colors were great and the growth rates too. How could they get away with this low lighting and have such nice corals? He noted that the "trick" was a constant trickle into the tank of plankton rich fresh sea water. This provides not only water changes but superior nutrition which makes up for the lower lighting. After all, lighting produces food for the coral through photosynthesis with the symbiotic algae (xooxanthellae) inside the corals' cells. This is a nice illustration of the relationship of food for corals from lighting versus live planktonic food. It is best to have both. Charles Delbeek and Julian Sprung have just released Volume II of their great book "The Reef Aquarium".
Speaking of open reef systems (reef tanks with ocean water feeding them), marine biologist Henry Feddern pointed out that gorgonians are very easy to keep in his tanks at home in Florida which are fed by real ocean water. Sometimes we have difficulties keeping certain gorgonians in our closed reef systems. Could it be the lack of plankton? Many corals really do need to be fed to thrive. Gorgonians, many corals and filter feeders in my own tanks do so much better when fed live plankton such as rotifers fed with green water - planktonic algae. Henry brought some gorgonians which were auctioned off. Also in the big auction were tank raised clownfish and two of Martin Moe's tank raised mated orchid dottybacks.
Two other speakers talked about some things that tie in nicely with what my column contained last month. George Blasiola talked about fish health and Marlin Atkinson talked about iodine and iodide use in the reef aquarium. Perhaps you haven't heard enough about iodide in this column lately? Marlin recommends NOT using Lugol's Iodine Solution or Strong Iodine Tincture for dosing aquariums due to the heavy oxidation potential of iodine on your corals which might harm them. The standard iodide supplement potassium iodide does not do this. He took a survey of all standard iodide using reef keepers at the conference, using iodide supplements from various reef supplement companies. That evening, in his hotel room, he figured out the actual comparative doses in micro moles which most of us non-chemists were not comfortable using. The next day he presented the results. Everybody dosed with different schedules from daily to every other week. He figured up the dosing comparisons based on each aquarist's total weekly use of potassium iodide. To sum it up, my own "natural sea level" dosage was one of the lowest in the whole group! My dosage is very safe but effective.
Recall my article last month where I said I'm using a dosage almost as strong as what Martin Moe suggests in his book The Marine Aquarium Reference. I based my dosage on keeping iodide levels close to natural sea water levels by using a SeaChem iodide test kit to monitor the aquarium water and establish the "proper" dosage. Marlin's survey was very revealing and showed that you can start killing corals at about ten times this dosage. The one example where coral deaths occurred from potassium iodide overdosing, a whole week's worth was dosed all at once! This fatal dose was about ten times more than my own total weekly use, which is twenty times higher than my single dose that I do twice weekly! A few people were dosing even heavier than this lethal level! The apparent reason he pointed out for these heavier doses not killing corals was that these larger weekly amounts are broken down into smaller DAILY doses which do not shock the corals so badly.
I now feel safer about using somewhat higher than seawater level doses of iodide. For example, Bob and Richard Stark at ESV Company were there and pointed out that the potassium iodide supplement they sell, and their standard recommended dosage, equates to three times more than the natural sea level dosing I use. Keep in mind, a heavily stocked tank can use this more readily. Their dosage is still well within what I perceived to be "the safe zone" on Marlin's survey. ESV's iodide and dosage rate gives reef tanks great results including good growth rates. Marlin also pointed out that iodide regulates growth in many animals.
Some people attending said that they or friends had lost their xenia corals when they switched away from using potassium iodide and started using Lugol's Solution or Strong Iodine Tincture. Some people dispute this possibility, but I would still take caution in the case of xenia. I don't think I'll dose my two tanks that have xenia with Strong Iodine Tincture. In conclusion, break down your iodide doses (potassium iodide) into smaller daily doses or every few days for best results. Strong Iodine Tincture still appears to me to be a good treatment solution for dipping most infected corals since it does have a higher antiseptic effect.
George Blasiola pointed out treatments for sick fish but maintained that a good diet including vitamin-C, Beta-carotene and other essential nutrients is vital to a fish's health. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Lateral line disease is prevented and even cured with vitamin-C and Beta-carotene which are now included in better fish foods. He also mentioned that some fish starve to death in our reef aquariums because they simply don't get enough calories. He pointed out that certain dry pellet or flake foods are a great way to provide more calories and good nutrition to keep tangs from starving and dying. He felt that thick flakes or pellets would be best since vitamins wouldn't dissolve into the water as fast as with thin flakes. He also recommends foods with stabilized vitamin-C in the form of L-Ascorbyl-2- Polyphosphate for best results. Hey, VibraGro and Total Color Marine, that we reviewed last month, have these vitamins and more!
There were so many more good speakers and topics, but I only have room to share these for now. I will be bringing up more information in future articles from this great marine conference. Now, back to the "star" attraction.
Many reef hobbyists have been looking for some of the very nicest colored real GREEN star polyps (clavularia) with bright flourescent REAL green coloring. Most of the ones we see nowadays are just tan with a slight green cast to them. It's hard to find the great ones for sale anymore. Maybe after looking around all the local reef aquarium shops, you resort to mail order and finally find a place where you can actually send away for real GREEN star polyps. The dealer tells you that they are "...soooo green that they'll make you cry!!!" Just what you're looking for! You anxiously order them; only $60 for a prime 4 by 6 inch colony on a rock.
The next day the Fed-Ex lady knocks on your door with a box and you sign for it in excitement! You hurriedly tear open the packing and put the star polyp rock in your reef aquarium and wait for the exquisite green polyps to emerge. "Open, open, open!!!" Later that day about half of the polyps are out. They almost look very slightly green to you. You ask your wife if they look green to her, wondering if you are somewhat color blind. As the days go on, the polyps look better. Still, they don't get any greener. You probably guessed the riddle by now: These star polyps were "soooo green" they made you cry. LeRoy Headlee of GARF had something like this happen to him. Some guys have all the luck. I'm glad it was you this time LeRoy and not me again!
Once you find some real colorful ones, you could just propagate them and keep multiplying them until all stores and hobbyists can get "real" green star polyps through propagation. It became apparent that if you want real flourescent green stars that you might even have to find someone who still has some of the best ones still in their tank from a few years ago. The next step? Beg, borrow, buy or trade.
I ran into a reef hobbyist, Dave Foster, who still had some real GREEN stars that he'd bought about three or four years ago. Even though Dave and I live in the same town, we hadn't met until we had both become active in the local Wasatch Marine Aquarium Society in nearby Salt Lake City, Utah. I finally got around to checking out his tank just last fall when we were preparing for our local marine aquarium society's first annual reef aquarium tour (which was a smashing success) patterned after the ones at GARF.
To organize your own reef aquarium tour, invite the newspaper to do a feature article on a nice reef aquarium, the self guided tour, your goal of reef preservation, coral and live rock propagation. The newspaper is glad to run a good special interest story (free) with color pictures the week of the tour. Be sure to include the phone numbers of two or three contacts in the write- up because you may get swamped with too many phone calls for one person. Lots of interested people call you and want to buy tickets to attend. This attracts lots of new members to your local aquarium society and provides funds for more reef-beneficial non-profit activities and guest speakers at meetings. This is not only a great way to help your aquarium society grow, but gives you an opportunity to spread reef conservation awareness, educating the public about coral reefs. Everyone loves it, young to old. Center it around conservation through reef propagation for best results. Most of the reefs on tour were 60% to 100% propagated. Find out from your local salt water stores when they do the heaviest reef business of the year. This the best time for your tour. The reef hobby in my area is somewhat seasonal and the best times are October/November and January to March.
During the tour, you can provide handouts on your aquarium society and on how to set up a simple reef aquarium. The tickets can be a simple brochure which has the addresses and a brief overview of each reef aquarium and owner on the tour. We charged $3 for adults and teens and $1.50 for seniors and children between 5 and 12. Include your marine aquarium society's mission statement on reef conservation in the ticket brochure. This should be included in the newspaper article too. Your local aquarium stores will probably want to advertize in your ticket brochure for added tour revenue. Three to six homes with reefs might be ideal. We had more. Sell tickets at the two or three contact points which are the homes that you put the phone numbers for in the newspaper article. These homes will be starting points and the touring public can start at any of these and end anywhere at their own leisure in their own cars from about 11:00 AM until 5:00 PM on a Saturday or Sunday. You might want to arrange to sell some tickets through local aquarium shops before the tour. Most of our tickets were still sold at the door. You might not want to put all the reefs in your club on tour. This way you can have a few society members at each home on the tour (especially the two or three starting homes) to answer questions, help sell tour tickets, sell raffle tickets (for a free small reef aquarium or whatever), pass out literature, keep light refreshments (cookies and Kool-Aid) in stock and sign up new members and... You get the idea.
Back to the "star" attraction again. We ARE going to propagate some great looking star polyps, you know. There are also some neat burgundy-brown ones with pale green centers that are nice. Everyone wants the real green ones. If you can successfully propagate them, they WILL sell! Here is how Dave Foster and I made some cuttings, then one month later, more mother colony rocks which can later be used to make even more periodic cuttings from. One afternoon Dave brought to my house one of his live rocks covered with gorgeous green stars growing from a dark purple base. The purple basal skin grows outward across the rock, spreading to other rocks, steadily conquering new territory under good conditions. In some places it may grow as fast as a quarter inch per week when it is feeling good and conditions are right. I have seen them grow fastest when spreading up an incline on a rock. Dave had been making more star polyp rocks by placing lava rocks next to the existing colony and letting them spread onto them. They seem to grow faster under brighter light and medium current blowing across them like tall emerald grass in the late spring breeze. The new skin is pale tan-ish violet until after new polyps emerge from it. As the polyps grow larger the skin turns deep purple. The purple underlying skin is somewhat crusty and has calcium spicules growing through it.
We used a lava rock with a three inch by three inch area encrusted with star polyps to provide cuttings. Not all lava rock works well in reef tanks. We started scoring it with a razor blade and Exacto knife so that we could peel patches of skin with polyps from the rock. The skin is rubbery and slightly crunchy. We continued to cut and peel off intermittent chunks and strips of purple skin with retracted star polyps. You can cut out any pattern you want and then just peel off the skin in the shape of the pattern you cut. We left only about one third of the polyps and skin on the rock, enough so that it could regrow rapidly, filling in the now bare gaps again. If you accidently peal too much of the skin with polyps off of the rock, don't worry, you can glue it back on with super glue gel as you'll see in a minute. We cut up the longer strips into smaller sizes, mostly about ¼ to 3/8 inch square. If successful, the original green star polyp rock or "mother colony" will fill back in and provide a whole new crop of polyps and skin for cuttings every month or two! This is why we didn't just strip all the skin and polyps off the rock to make more cuttings just once. If we kept doing this every month or so, keeping enough "seed stock" in the form of mother colonies, we could keep production rolling. Before long, fantastic looking green star polyps could dot hobbyists' tanks across the land. Many people in our area have Dave's green stars already.
For the first batch we used 24 smaller Idaho aragonite rocks and started attaching the cut up patches of polyps to them. Cement "cookies" and some lava rock work well too. Refer to the April 97 issue of this magazine on page 13 for the details on making reef-safe cement cookies and rocks. Grade/type I/II Portland cement works well too. We super glued half and used fishing line to attach the rest. We wanted to see which would do better. We wrapped a strand of fishing line over the purple skin from which the polyps grow. We then tied the line around the back of the rocks to hold it tightly in place while the star polyps attach to the rocks as new skin starts growing outward on the rock over the next week or so. One to three polyp clumps were attached to most of the rocks. Super Reef Gel (thick super glue gel for coral propagation from Mark Barnes ReefGel@aol.com) was used to glue the remainder of the chunks of skin with polyps onto rocks. We went light on the Reef Gel and tried to let some of the purple skin touch the rock directly for hopefully quicker attachment and spreading. We quickly dunked the rocks with newly glued polyps in a bowl of tank water to prevent burning when fresh super glue drys or cures. We threw away the tank water in the bowl when finished.
Dave took half of the cuttings home and I kept half in my tanks. The ones that grew the best were the ones with the brightest lighting and good water current. When cutting up strips of star polyps for propagation you should try to have at least four polyps (preferably more) in each small cluster for faster growth and better survival. We've noticed that pieces of star polyp skin with only one or two polyps had a lower survival rate. This sounds a lot like skin grafting. I guess it is. If it sounds more like making cuttings of plants in the garden, it is this also. Corals are like "plantimals". Coral reef gardening or farming is fascinating. Both types of cuttings (glued on or tied down with fishing line) attached, grew and spread well. The Reef Gel is much quicker and easier to use than fishing line. Super Reef Gel is also great for attaching new corals right in your tank. Underwater gluing is easy. (NOTE: Any super glue can be used for this, but the thicker gels work better. Super Reef Gel is the thickest.)
Nearly a month later I went to Dave's house to see his cuttings. The original mother colony rock had now regrown all of the skin and polyps we had stripped from it. It looked wonderful again! You couldn't tell that it had ever given up enough polyps to make 24 small star polyp rocks. He could now get 24 more small cuttings started from the same rock if he chose to. Theoretically you could take a three inch star polyp rock and use it to make two more just like it over the next month which would now give you three nice mother colonies which could triple your potential production. You could make six more next month which would combine with the first three to give you nine at the end of two months. This is of course if your goal is to just make more mother colonies for right now in order to set yourself up for even higher production of cuttings later. The numbers can grow exponentially. See the accompanying picture of the regrown star polyp rock, or mother colony, before we stripped it again. We took more polyps and skin off this mother colony the second time and super glued them, spaced further than normal, on two aragonite rocks that were larger than three inches. See picture. The face of the original mother colony rock was not fully covered with star polyps. So, we glued several of the small clumps of star polyps to the bare part to help the rest of the rock fill in faster.
If you can triple them every month and all goes perfectly well, you could have 729 three inch mother colonies by the end of six months. You could now make a couple dozen star polyp rocks for sale off of each of these mother colonies every month if you keep multiplying them in this way!!! Did that make dollar signs start flashing in your head? But wait. Does anything really go as planned? Murphy was a reef keeper, too. So, let's be just a bit more pessimistic and say that you only succeed at tripling your mother colonies every three months. This means you only end up having made nine mother colonies by the end of the six month preparation period - not 729. You are now ready to start production of green stars for sale, unless you want to wait three more months while tripling them again to get 27 mother colonies which will let you TRIPLE the figures we will see next. We now make 24 modest star polyp rocks to sell from each of your nine mother colonies just once every three months. This lets us start 216 star polyp rocks for sale every three months from now on. 216 every three months equates to 864 small star polyp rocks to sell each year. Now you wholesale them at a conservative $5 for each modest but beautiful two or three inch bright metallic green star polyp rock.
You could (very conservatively) gross $4320 a year, minus expenses which shouldn't be too bad if you do this by yourself in a spare room or garage at home with cheap and simple equipment. You could do a larger one person operation like this "part time" at night, say 40 - 80 hours a week after work. Or, you could kill this whole dream by being so anxious to get started that you use inferior brood stock just to get started sooner. Great color sells itself and you won't be able to supply enough at first. Remember supply and demand? Wouldn't it be terrible to have to charge more at first!? Think about it: If you saw some really fantastic "to die for" green stars, what would you pay for them? There are many corals that everybody wants. You could do this same thing with a number of them. The "stars" are NOT the limit!
The two new mother colonies (pictured with the original colony on a plate) that we made are larger than the three inch example I gave above. This was in hopes of exceeding production goals. One problem that popped up with these particular mother colonies is that some of the polyp clumps died off, as you can see. Remember Murphy? You can also see that some of the clumps have grown together and pieces can now be scored and peeled off with a razor knife again and reglued to replace the ones that died. The latter picture was taken two and a half weeks after the polyps were glued to the rocks. After nearly six weeks the polyps had filled in just over half of the empty space on the new mother colony rocks. Growth didn't go as fast this time as last. Once we get these more sparse starter colonies filled in, the next multiplication can be done less sparsely and should move faster.
Let's look at how to keep costs under control whether you are just doing this in two or three tanks or a whole batch of tanks. This applies to growing other corals too. Aquarium racks, like the ones in fish stores, can hold two or three tanks above and below each other in a small two by four foot space. This is about right if you only want to get into the business end of propagation in a small way without giving up much living space. Some people use 3.5 foot long thick plastic Rubbermaid tubs (from Wal-Mart), horse watering troughs or even $10 rigid plastic kiddie swimming pools (5 foot diameter) stacked on wooden platforms, or tables one above another.
Tanks or tubs short in height seem to work very well because you can keep the lights closer to the corals. Standard 40 watt flourescent bulbs just above the water with water proof end caps and good supports to keep them out of the water will do the trick if the corals are close to the light. I prefer Triton and Blue Moon Reef bulbs with a real mirrored reflector. A true electronic ballast used with these lights will help you get more light also. These lights save money and develop great coloration in corals. 55 gallon tanks work fine but 45 gallon four foot long tanks are shorter and keep the corals closer to the light. Simple reef aquarium set ups work great here. Variations from the Lee Chin Eng natural method like Merrill Cohen's "Easier than Freshwater Reef Aquarium", Bob Stark's souped up Lee Chin Eng style reef or the HANDY Reef work well. Use CaribSea aragonite sands or ESV oolitic aragonite sand to buffer and supply calcium much more easily and more cheaply. Keep it simple and inexpensive.
I know what some of you must be saying right now. "Is this guy crazy? Cutting up perfectly good corals! Won't he ruin them? Won't they die or something? I wouldn't dare cut up my corals! Won't the super glue kill things in my reef aquarium too?" As for the super glue being poisonous to your reef aquarium, it isn't! Many aquarists have used lots of it to glue many things right in the reef aquarium and have never noted any negative effects in their reef aquariums! It's normal to be nervous the first time you cut a piece off of a coral. To make it easier, just pretend that you're a gardener making cuttings from rose bushes to start more small rose bushes, or other plants if you like. Give it a try, then it will be easy next time, maybe even addictive. Just imagine, YOU, a scissor-happy reef gardener!? Sound incredible? Not at all. Even if you don't want to become a coral farmer, just try a little bit of reef gardening, just one cutting of some coral for your own tank or to trade with or just to give to a friend. This is the least you could do for the coral reefs. Learn to propagate a few. The president does (a joke).
As a real estate agent I often hear that the three most important things to consider when buying a property are: location, location and location! When growing corals for profit the three most important things would be: color, color and color! If you get into real coral reef farming this will help you move your coral cuttings through your local reef stores. People buy color. Well, maybe that isn't the only consideration, but it certainly is important when it comes to being able to sell them easily. Other important considerations might be: Choosing fast growing corals and ones that are easy for most hobbyists to keep. What good to a coral farmer is a "breath- taking beauty" that takes ten years to grow? Some of the choices you face can make the difference between losing your shirt or making a tidy profit. If you're just in it for fun, it's still a lot more fun to grow some real knock-out coral cuttings quickly that your friends or local store owners will want to trade for. Many kinds of reef life can be grown and sold using just a couple of well organized simple reef tanks, even two 55-gallon tanks if that's all the room you have.
That just about does it for this month. Next month we'll hear the real story on kalkwasser, carbonate and clumping as told like no one else does, except for Richard Greenfield, Jr. the V.P. of CaribSea, the makers of great aragonite sand. (Note: You can read this on this web page in the general articles section.) The "Sand Man" cometh! You'll have a much better understanding of the proper use of kalkwasser, buffers and calcium supplements after this. You'll also be much better able to control your calcium, pH and alkalinity. If you have any questions send me an e- mail at EZreef@yahoo.com or send an SASE to me in care of this magazine. Is it possible that your fame and fortune lie in the "stars"? If you do become a reef farmer and decide to specialize in growing star polyps, remember what Kasey Kasem says: "Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars." Sea you next month.