This new page has some of my favorite information from the other parts of the website.
I hope that you're able to produce soft corals, because they're very good for increasing sales, and they are the first corals people need when they start your new reef aquarium.
Soft corals are easy to propagate, but there are a few tricks that you can learn that will help you make more of them. These are good corals to trade in at the Fish store for rare SPS type corals.
FINE BRANCH PINK CORAL STANDS OUT
The fine branches of this coral is not quite like any other in the nonconnected genetic bank. This coral is a very good seller because it does not look like other soft corals. This is one of the only soft corals that spawns in the aquarium. The young corals attach to the live rock and they grow very fast.
This is a very hardy coral and it has done well in many systems. We have had great success shipping this coral. We hang the reef plug upside down in a styrofoam ring and so far we have not lost one. We are certain this coral will be one of the best soft corals to propagate for profit. It has all of the best traits. It is easy to propagate, easy to ship, fast growing, and many people do not have it in their reefs yet.
This image shows a large Capnella in the center of the picture. You can also see some Sinularia in the lower left-hand corner both the pink one and a green one. In the upper right hand corner there are some Xenia. You can see there are lots of SPS corals; some people so you can't keep them together but that's foolishness.X
REMEMBER - SAVE A REEF - GROW YOUR OWN
The common color for this coral which is often call the Kenya tree is a reddy brown. It the coral that grows fast and it is nice for beginners, but the colored ones are so much more valuable. The colored ones are the only ones that you should be looking for. You can get them growing in Yellow Green and Blue.
These are the Green Capnella that you can grow for your own coral farm. This coral is showing up more often and people really like it. It's a beautiful coral that lives well, and it's very easy to propagate. We will be teaching you how we've grown them here Garf.
These corals often looked very white when you first get them, but after they've grown for a while they have more and more color. The cuttings will keep that color and they look great in your customers aquariums
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PROPAGATING CAPNELLA
CAPNELLA SOFT CORAL
Capnella are one of the easy corals. We just cut the branches into 1/2-inch long pieces and we drop them into a tank with course substrate. We do use the older Capnella in our systems to provide new symbionts for them.
We have found that we can increase the number of surviving cuttings of the new Capnella when we cut up several of our fastest growing Capnella in the water we use to hold the new cuttings. We leave the new cuttings in this water for one half-hour.
Class Anthozoa
Subclass Octocorallia
Order Alcyonacea
Family Alcyoniidae
Genus Sinularia
Sinularia are one of my favorite soft corals. There
are several different kinds of Sinularia commonly
available, and each is colorful with an interesting
shape. The most familiar kind of Sinularia is
probably Sinularia dura, commonly known as the cabbage
Sinularia.
This Sinularia grows in a shape much like
a pinkish cabbage. The flesh is translucent and may
have a greenish tint. Often there will be a row of
polyps on the very edges of the "leaf."
Other types of Sinularia grow in finger shapes or even
in a shape like a cauliflower head. The shapes and
colors can be highly variable, but in this genus, they
are always beautiful.
I have recently propagated a lot of a gorgeous and
rare kind of Sinularia. This green Sinularia grows in
a shape like a weeping willow tree. The color is an
unearthly, glowing green.
These Sinularia grow very quickly, and are pretty
adaptable; I have them in several different systems
here, and each one is doing fine. This particular
species tends to prefer fairly strong current and
light, and will look best in a combination of white
and blue actinic VHO lights.
These corals have specialized cells called Amebocytes,
which produce calcium carbonate spicules. A spicule
is like a little spine that grows in the inside of the
coral lending it support. Calcium carbonate is the
same material that SPS corals use to produce
skeletons, although Sinularia are not directly related
to SPS.
Because of these spicules, Sinularia are easy to
propagate. The spicules make the coral tougher than
most other soft corals. They can be sewed onto
plugs, or the bridal veil netting method can be used.
However, the method that I have found easiest is
simply to rubber band them onto GARF plugs.
First procure a handful of these thin, black rubber
bands.
Next, cut a Sinularia into small pieces. Each piece
should be big enough to have at least 1 "fork" and 2
branches. Put these pieces in a dish of water, and
the parent colony can go back into the tank.
Attach each piece to a plug with a thin rubber band.
You should choose plugs that are flat on top (but
textured enough to make it easy for the coral to hold
onto). Other material, like pieces of rubble, could
conceivably be used for attachment sites.
These plugs should be placed into an area with limited
current until they attach; otherwise they might get
blown off the plug. In about a month, the green
sinularia will be attached firmly to the plug.
You can either take the rubber band off then or wait until
the rubber band dissolves in the seawater .
These Sinularia grow so quickly, that in no time you
should be able to cut your cuttings again, producing
more coral!
These are the live rocks that come with the divesity specials!
Colt coral
Genus Cladiella
Colt coral is one of my favorite corals. It is fast,
easy to grow and pretty hardy. This coral is also a
coral that has been in the hobby for a while. All of
GARF's colt coral came from a schoolteacher in a
nearby town. Every couple of months he would send us
several huge pieces of his coral.
We have many different stories for origins of coral
here at GARF. There is a kind of unique Pavona, the
only one of its kind that Leroy has ever seen, that
was picked up on the beach growing on a dolphin's
jawbone. However, this colt coral story is one of my
favorites. It represents the ultimate goals of coral
aquaculture: propagation of corals that are twice
removed from the wild ocean, and hobbyists who are
willing to work together and trade corals.
Unfortunately, colt coral has proven to be a fairly
difficult corals to propagate. With many soft corals,
all you have to do is cut several pieces off, put them
over a gravel bed and in no time you'll have many soft
corals ready to glue to plugs. Colt coral pieces have
a much harder time attaching themselves. They'll
drift around in an aquarium and eventually get sucked
up by a powerhead and shredded into tiny bits.
Other conventional propagation techniques don't work
either. Colt coral is too slimy to glue down, and it
can't be sewed on to a plug. Even the tried-and-true
bridal veil netting method doesn't always work for
these corals.
However, after several months of research, I have
found a pretty foolproof way to grow colt coral.
Materials:
Plastic sword
Plugs with a hole
SallyJo's Reef Gel
After the coral has grown pretty big, take a sharp
pair of scissors and cut it into many pieces. Each
piece should be about the width of a nickel, and an
inch high. If you have a colt coral that is thick,
be sure that there is a section of the outer skin,
which contains polyps, on the piece.
Before you cut the colt coral, ready some plugs. At
Garf, we make special plugs that have holes drilled in
them.
Take a plastic sword, and use reef glue to glue the
blunt end inside the hole so the sharp end is sticking
straight up. I use the swords that are used to spear
sandwiches or as toothpicks in restaurants. Other
sharp plastic objects could be used, such as
toothpicks; however most toothpicks are made of wood
and are not suitable.
At this point, I must give a huge thanks to my mother.
She has driven down to the restaurant supply store
and bought these swords for my experiments many times,
without asking why I needed hundreds of tiny plastic
weapons.
I would never have had the time to go down
to the supply store myself, so without my mother this
new colt coral propagation technique would not exist.
Leave the swords and the plugs in a container of water
for a couple of hours. This will ensure that the
sword is stuck firm.
Use this page to purchase the Garf.org PRODUCTS for your reef aquarium.
We use many types of grunge in each reef.
Garf Grunge Plus™ consists of larger particles about the size of walnuts down to thumbnail size and it is harvesteed from the older tanks.
Garf Grunge Plus™ contains more of the small invertebrates such as the worms, Copepods, Amphipods, and many others such as Brittle stars.
Garf Grunge Plus™ is used to create a cryptic zone in the existing aquarium. This is done by piling the Garf Grunge Plus™ in a back corner. Garf Grunge Plus™ is the finest thing to add to seed the refugeum. This product has been extremely popular and it does a great job of creating a small hiding place called the cryptic zone in the main tank and in the sump. Learn more about GARF Grunge plustm
We use many types of grunge in each reef.
Our newest product is one of the most asked for things that we've had during the years and this is Garf Grunge Bright White™.
Garf Grunge Bright White™ is grown in our grunge tanks using a very fine aragonite sand. It fits really well with modern look of white gravel. There are still a lot of micro invertebrates, and an extremely large number of that bacteria. Garf Grunge Bright White™ has many strains that will not ship in the big bag live sand or wild sand. Garf Grunge Bright White™ is the newest product but it's very very popular, and we will be glad to help you with Your questions when you call.
We use many types of grunge in each reef.
Grunge Light Mud™ is the Best thing to add to mud filters and refugeums.
It consists very fine particles of our Grunge™. We collect it from the square corners of our grow out tanks.
These tanks are 6 foot across, and they have lots and lots of grunge and live sand moving through them. The grunge light from the corners is very small. and it works great in the mud filter or refugeum chamber. We've been shipping this product to people who are starting a refugeum, because the mud that they buy doesn't have anything alive, and there are lots of different organisms that thrive in very fine particulate mud.
We are selling a group of garf.org products called Garf Diversity&trade, and we will be posting the Garf Diversity™ packages for each size reef. You will get the Garf Grunge™, Garf Grunge Plus™l, and the Bag-o-macro Algae™free. You can also choose a live coralline covered live rock and any of Sally Jo's Bag-o-bugs™. These specials start at only 59.00 for a reef aquarium up to 27 gallons. Call LeRoy 208-344-6163 the first callers get the finest live rocks:) Sally Jo's students visit a coral farming Reef store.
Green algae control buttons
Now, take the pieces of coral and stake them onto the
swords. Push each piece all the way down, so it is in
contact with the base of the plug. Then, place a dab
of glue where the top of the colt coral touches the
sword. This glue will harden on the plastic of the
sword, and prevent the colt coral from floating up off
the sword.
Cut the top of the sword off for aesthetic reasons.
That's the entire process! The finished colt coral
plugs should be initially put in a place of the tank
with pretty low current.
After a couple of weeks they
will be established enough to withstand higher
current, although colt corals generally prefer medium
light and low current.
In a couple of months your colt coral plug will be
ready to be cut again, producing more of these
beautiful animals!
