If you had any doubt about how fast and colorful corals can grow in the ocean, here’s a time delayed video to natural growth rates in context. This segment of coral gardening is an exerpt from tne BBC film “Fragile Paradise”, from the “South Pacific” series of programs. It’s really neat to see free divers fragging, harvesting and replanting their coral branches on the reef in very much the same way that we home aquarists would for our own reef aquarium, except that we get considerably less wet. The breakneck growth of their broodstock corals is simply amazing and it goes to show how long we have to go to approximate the natural growth rate. Although these corals are being aquacultured primarily for replanting on the real reef, it’s neat to see how the damaged and replanted reef looks very much like our own fruit stand style aquascaping before the corals grow out to significant size.
