Up close with the beautiful corals of Lubang Island, Philippines

Around this time last year, we were invited to visit the budding coral farms that RVS 4-Star Mariculture is developing in the Philippines. Several sites are planned for future coral farming efforts in the Philippines, and we managed to visit the beautiful…

Stereonephthya, portrait of an uncommon soft coral

Stereonephthya is an uncommon soft coral which is seriously underrated, both as an aquarium coral, and as a unique member of the coral reef community. The simplest way to describe Stereonephthya is that it’s the lovechild of photosynthetic Nephthea and…

Cherry-picking fresh Acros right from the Coral Farm

Cherry picking corals from an ocean based coral farm is very much like picking ripe fruit from a tree. Otherwise known as mariculture, growing corals in the ocean offers the same advantages and disadvantages as growing of food crops. On one…

Reef Builders Indonesia Travelogue – Bali Aquarium Serangan Coral Farm

Staring out to sea only a few short kilometers from the hustle and bustle of Denpasar Indonesia, it would be easy to miss what is going on beneath the surface. Above, you would notice surfers paddling between crashing waves and fishermen wading out…

Corals can be grown on so much more than frag plugs

Coral frags and coral propagation have moved so far beyond the experimentation phase, the hobby is practically dominated by frags instead of colonies. There’s countless numbers of corals and frags being grown in stores, warehouses and basements all across the…

How to thoroughly quarantine your Corals

 With just about every endeavor success breeds new challenges. As I have already noted in several articles, with the improved success we have now achieved in keeping just about every type of coral and invertebrate long-term we are now seeing…

Bonsai reef structures from West Mariculture

As reef aquarists are becoming more experimental with our aquascapes and the layout of our corals, we’re increasingly on the lookout for unique ways and unique rock structures to make our tanks stand out. The Bonsai Reef Structures from West Mariculture…

Top 7 rainbow SPS and Acropora corals

As stated in a previous post on rainbow corals, a plethora of colors are not too difficult to find in the LPS corals of today. It is evident that this is an exciting time to be in the marine aquarium hobby. What…

The Show Episode 5: Jake & Vincent talk about coral farming and diving the Flores Sea

If you don’t know who Vincent Chalias is by now you must have been living under a very big piece of live rock. Following on the successes of Bob Mankin in the Solomon Islands and Walt Smith in Fiji, Mr.…

Meet 6 of the corals that are in danger of becoming illegal

The petition to list over 80 species of stony corals as endangered led to a ruling that 20 of the proposed corals were deemed threatened, and warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. Of those 20 corals, five are Caribbean…