Grow Your Own Coral |

Grow Your Own Coral

Keeping a saltwater aquarium is a beautiful and popular hobby. It’s also an expensive one. There’s the cost of the tank, the fish, the equipment, and of course, the coral. Aquarium coral can cost anywhere from $40 for beginner corals, up to $300 for exotic types. In California, a single Bounce Mushroom coral polyp sold for $6000 in 2018!

Luckily, there are some ways to save a bit of cash. One is to propagate, or grow, your own coral.

With hard corals, it’s as simple as cutting off a branch and attaching it to a new surface with glue or fishing line. The branch will then begin to grow into a brand new hard coral. In zoas, which are soft coral, you cut between the polyps and attach the new mat onto the surface. For mushrooms corals, you must divide equally across the center of the mouth, then place into a drilled plastic container with some rocks, where it will adhere itself.

Perhaps the most important thing to remember when propagating corals is to be safe. Some corals, such as zoanthids and palythoas, emit a substance called palytoxin that can cause serious reactions if it comes in contact with skin or eyes. You must wear gloves and protective eye wear to properly shield yourself from any of the toxin.

Other corals can give out a nasty sting with their tentacles, so the same precautions are recommended. You will also needs tools appropriate to the type of coral that you are propagating, depending on the type anything from a razor to a band-saw may be required. Ample research into the particular type of coral you are dealing with is highly advised.

Of course, hobbyists aren’t the only people interested in propagating coral. Many scientists are working to increase coral growth in the world’s oceans. Microfragmenting is a technique that uses tiny coral “seeds,” which grow 25 or even 50 percent faster than usual. This may make it possible to mass-produce reef-building corals for transplanting onto dead or dying reefs, perhaps slowing or even reversing the alarming loss of corals throughout the world.

Sources:

Curriculum Reference LInks

Biological World / Systems and Interactions / 5: Students should be able to conduct a habitat study; research and investigate the adaptation, competition and interdependence of organisms within specific habitats and communities
Biological World / Sustainability / 10: Students should be able to evaluate how humans can successfully conserve ecological biodiversity and contribute to global food production; appreciate the benefits that people obtain from ecosystems

10 Fun Facts: The Hab

1. Aquarius is the the world’s only permanent undersea research station.

2. Most missions last about two or three weeks.

3. Fabien Cousteau, grandson of Jacques Cousteau, beat his grandfather’s record month-long underwater expedition by spending 31 days on the Aquarius Reef Base in 2014.

4. The lab is used by NASA, the US Navy, and researchers and educators from around the globe for training and research.

5. The internet connection is better in the Hab than at many places above the water.

6. You have to swim underneath the facility in order to enter it.

7. Crew members are called aquanauts (NOT aquaNUTS!)

8. In 1994, a crew of scientists and divers had to evacuate Aquarius and climb up a rescue line to the surface in 15-foot seas after one of the habitat’s generators caught fire.

9. Aquarius was featured in the comic strip Sherman’s Lagoon in 2012.

10. The Hab was originally built in Texas.

10 Fun Facts: Coral

1. Reefs usually grow up on the east shore of land masses.

2. Parts of a coral reef can be harvested to make medications to treat cancers and other illnesses.

3. A coral reef isn’t a single organism; it’s actually a community of life that lives and thrives in one location.

4. Only about one percent of the world’s oceans contain coral reefs. That’s about the size of France.

5. Coral reefs are the largest biological structures on earth.

6. Corals are related to jellyfish and anemones.

7. There are over 2,500 species of corals. About 1,000 are the hard corals that build coral reefs.

8. Reefs grow where there are stronger wave patterns and currents to deliver food and nutrients.

9. The Great Barrier Reef is 500,000 years old.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10. Most coral reefs grow just about two centimeters per year.

10 Fun Facts: Invasive Species

1. To be considered invasive, a species must adapt to a new area easily. It must reproduce quickly. It must harm property, the economy, or the native plants and animals of the region.

2. Some invasive species are introduced accidentally, but others are brought deliberately.

3. Ship ballast water transports between 3,000 and 7,000 foreign species daily around the globe.

4. The total loss to the world economy as a result of invasive non-native species has been estimated at 5% of annual production

5. Invasive species have contributed to 40% of the animal extinctions that have occurred in the last 400 years.

6. Rodents are some of the worst invasive species.

7. There are an estimated 50,000 wild ring-necked parakeets in parks across London and southeast England.

8. Black and Norway rats annually consume stored grains and destroy other property valued over $19 billion.

9. Northern Pacific seastars reproduce very quickly. In one area where they were introduced, their population reached an estimated 12 million seastars in just two years.

10. Starlings were introduced to New York in the late 1800s, as part of an attempt to bring animals that were mentioned in Shakespeare‘s work to America.

Back to Hablog