Is it possible to create a coral garden in the ocean?

[krourke85]

G'day all,

 

I'm looking at buying a beach house near the Great Barrier Reef in the near future and I had a crazy idea I wanted to run by you all.

 

Is it possible to create a coral garden?

 

I'm thinking directly in the ocean or in a nearby 'pool' connected to the ocean.

 

Essentially, is there any reason that putting selected corals/anemones in a netted off area of ocean wouldn't work? You could still feed them and remove some predators to help them grow quickly

[4x5]

I'm sure that would be highly illegal without going through major effort to get permits for what would essentially be a mariculture set up.

[atrox]

Why not just enjoy the Great Barrier Reef in you're backyard.

[JLynn]

Well if you mean garden in the sense that you just sort of use the ocean as your own personal aquarium (rather than as an extremely large frag tank), then I am sure you could just go do it, no permits necessary. There are laws about what fish and corals we can take from the ocean, but as far as I know, there are no laws about what fish and corals we can put in to the ocean. Unless you want to put in a non-native species, of course.

 

Of course, the area by your house might not be suitable for a reef, which you can't do much of anything about, really. But even if it isn't suitable for a reef, there is no reason you couldn't plant mangroves or seagrass. That way you could still enjoy the fish (eventually), and the mangroves would someday grow large enough to serve as a substrate for sponges and gorgonians and soft corals.

 

To be honest, I have been thinking that I would love to do something like that myself. My ideal future involves me somehow having enough money to buy a private island in the Caribbean where I can basically treat the whole place as an exceptionally large, maintenance-free aquarium! I wouldn't want to live there, of course, just go visit and dive my reef from time to time.

[ninjamyst]

I would be worried about introducing livestock that's not native to that area and disturbing the ecosystem. I highly doubt you can "rope" off the area completely.

[markalot]

It is typically illegal to put any aquarium stock back into the ocean. A big concern would be introducing a pest on a coral from one part of the world into another part.

 

Youtube Mariculture coral

 

 

That tank looks filthy, they need to run some carbon or something to clean up the water.

[GHill762]

I would think you could gather stuff from GBR and place it where you want it so long as it never goes into an aquarium or gets mixed with any other stuff...

 

 

either way, cool idea and much cheaper than an actual aquarium..

[4x5]

I would think you could gather stuff from GBR and place it where you want it so long as it never goes into an aquarium or gets mixed with any other stuff...

 

 

either way, cool idea and much cheaper than an actual aquarium..

That would depend on what's being collected. I know its illegal to collect SPS here in South Africa. Don't think you'll be allowed to on the Barrier Reed either without some serious paper work.

[GHill762]

yeah, you'd definitely have to check local laws..

[krourke85]

Thanks guys.

 

In our tanks we tend to use the top 0.01% of corals/anemones from the reefs.

Take The Coral Collection for example. I have never seen livestock like that on an actual reef.

 

I think it would be cool to have a small garden filled with ultra exotic corals. If it can eventually grow and reduce reef harvesting in the hobby that would be great too.

 

For legality, perhaps it would help to make it public, like one of those aquatic centers. I just think it would be a really cool hobby for semi retirement.

[hey]

only if its done in a cool way like this

 

 

[Mustang Boy]

Thanks guys. In our tanks we tend to use the top 0.01% of corals/anemones from the reefs. Take The Coral Collection for example. I have never seen livestock like that on an actual reef. I think it would be cool to have a small garden filled with ultra exotic corals. If it can eventually grow and reduce reef harvesting in the hobby that would be great too. For legality, perhaps it would help to make it public, like one of those aquatic centers. I just think it would be a really cool hobby for semi retirement.

 

A lot of that has to do with our lighting, we tend to use lighting that is designed to make corals pop as much as possible. The lighting under the sun isn't nearly as packed with blue that makes corals pop like the insanely blue spectrums we tend to lean towards in tanks.

[East1]

only if its done in a cool way like this

 

 

 

yeah, start an underwater cult