Aquariums are Saving the Last Florida Pillar Corals

Vincent Chalias

Sep 20, 2019

A team of Scientist and Aquarist from the Florida Aquarium, last month broke the news for spawning in captivity for the first time, the last remaining live colonies of Pillar coral (Dendrogyra cylindrus) known from Florida state waters.

Aquarium Industry could save the reefs:

The classic appearance of Caribbean Pillar Coral Dendrogyra cylindrus.

This particular piece bleached a little following the stress due to the spawning, but is quickly recovering under the Aquarist care.

The interesting story I find behind it, is that after a disease outbreak – probably caused by human development and waste – that killed most of these corals through the Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease. The last remaining 50 colonies still alive in the state of Florida, got rescued by the only peoples that could do anything to save this species from local extinction, or even come up with a solution to re-introduce this corals on the reefs, are Aquarium Industry people.

Aquarium equipment solution to save reefs:

The Florida Aquarium, and his team collaborated with and used techniques developed by last year MASNA Aquarist of the Year Dr Jamie Craggs in the Horniman Museum in London.

The main spawning tank of Pillar corals at Florida Aquarium facility.

The tank being kept in the dark with black panels, is kept under inverted photoperiod, to ease spawning work.

One of the tank being completely kept in the dark.

Under the supervision of Senior Coral Scientist Keri O’Neil, with a team of Florida Aquarium aquarist, managed to spawn this gonochoric coral using pretty common aquarium features, includings things like Ecotech Radion and Reef Octopus skimmers.

One of the spawning tank of Dendrogyra cylindrus using many classic aquarium features to achieve this amazing result.

A pretty classic Aquarium sump is used for this purpose.

Larvaes are then reared in the greenhouse building behind.

The larval system, where larvae are settled.

There still a lot of work to be done, until we can save all the coral species from the Caribbean. Hopefully authorities will do what is necessary to reduce human impact on these beautiful reef. Until then we should all be proud that the aquarium community is being part of the solution, not the problem.

The Florida aquarium facility in Apollo Beach, Florida.

The Green house building part of the facility.

We should be all celebrating these team great achievements, for the future of the corals reefs, but also for the future of our industry.

Vincent Chalias

Vincent is a coral passionate aquarist with extensive experience in the industry, travelling the world to learn about corals. His background is a master degree in Marine Aquaculture. He set up the first Indonesian Coral mariculture farms at the beginning of the century and spent over 20 years in Indonesia running them. He's been extensively diving and documenting corals all over the Indo-Pacific.