The first all captive raised LFS has finally opened. Green Marine opened its doors on Jan 1, 2010 in Berkeley, Calif., and we have to say we are impressed. The store is clean, open and was well stocked with both captive-raised corals, fish and inverts, both from ORA and local breeders and farmers. It was fantastic how full the tanks looked with all CB livestock, and people were more than happy to be buying animals that weren’t going to affect wild populations. Some local skeptics feared that a captive raised LFS wouldn’t have enough selection to satisfy the public, but that didn’t seem to be a problem at all for Green Marine as animals flew out of the store as fast as they could be bagged up.
The idea of an all captive raised LFS has been floating around for years, but its great that someone finally did it. Now more than ever, such a store can be stocked, and stocked well, as local reefers are farming corals and breeding marine fish. Hopefully, the trend will catch on and we’ll see more captive only stores open around the country.
Besides being all captive raised, Green Marines frags come with another innovation – the bulk of them sell for 10 bucks each regardless of species! That’s right, no sexy common name to drive up the price. Frags are grown on acrylic rods the get them above the boundary layer resulting in fast growth, in a series of 12 60-gallon frag systems with alternating and oscillating horizontal gyres lit by two 175 or two 250 Watt MH of varying color temperature. According to co-owner Jim Adelberg, also Reef Hobbyist Magazines editor, each of the current 12 systems at Green Marine will hold a minimum of 1,276 frags. “We’re farming at 181 frags per square foot, and each tank should easily accommodate seven square feet of frag racks which gives of a modest 15,000 frag capacity. Then there is space under the frag racks which should yield another 1,000 zoa/lps frags.”
There are plans for the store to etail as well, but they anticipate a few months time before they are stocked enough to support that leg of sales. With the way animals were flying out the doors on opening day, we can believe that!
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