Soft Coral Growth Sasha and Liza

In our proposal we asked ourselves a series of question… 1.Which coral will grow the fastest? 2.How long does it take it coral to reach its maximum size? 3.Will the corals grow faster or slower in the wild? 4.Can we feed the corals certain nutrients to make them grow faster? 5.How will the corals interact if one gets too big?

Hypothesis: Under the same conditions the mushroom coral will grow more than a branching, soft, coral over the course of the year.

Original research plan: ●Grow four different soft corals… calculate which grows the fastest ●Count how many times the stalk split (Sinularia) ●Count how many times the polyps divide (Rhodactis) ●Count the bunches of polyps

Our Corals

Rhodactis Originally from tank A. Fragged by cutting a small polyp off the original coral and placed it into the tank

Nephthea Originally in tank 8, we did not touch this coral AT ALL. It stayed in place the whole time unlike the other corals that we have to move around a couple of times

Silver Xenia Ordered online. Originally put in the Frag tank. Eventually we moved it into tank 8 because it thrived in the Frag tank

Neon Green Sinularia Ordered online. Started off on the bottom of the tank and then had to move it multiple times to get the correct air flow

Material and Methods: ●Measurement grid ●Tank ●Corals ●Lifeguard ●Refractometer ●pH testing kit

Data Collection Sheets:

Each square is 1 cm by 1 cm Measurements

How to propagate (frag) soft coral... 1.Obtain desired coral 2.Place coral in shallow water 3.Prepare the plug and glue 4.Pick up the coral and snip a small part of the stalk off 5.Put glue on the plug 6.Place the stalk of the coral on the glue 7.Once dry place in the tank

Tank 8

Data Collected

Data: Monthly Averages

Graphs:

Average Length

Average Height

Which coral will grow the fastest? ●Hard to determine ●Different starting points ●Soft coral absorb and let go of water so they can grow and then shrink

How long does it take for each coral to reach its maximum size? ●Unknown ●Average size can range from.25in to 4 ft. ●Grow up to 4.5 cm per year

Will the coral growth in tank 8 be faster or slower than the average time it takes for a coral to grow in the wild? ●Grow better in a controlled environment

Can we feed the coral nutrients to help them grow faster? ●Other than being fed every day, the corals were not targeted to grow faster

How the different corals will interact together, if the corals get too big? ●Question wasn’t fully run because the corals were never too close together ●Sinu and Mushroom coral did occasionally touch but nothing happened

Discussion Over the course of the year the mushroom coral did split the most and seemed to remain a very consistent healthy size relative to the other three corals.

Conclusion:

Challenges ●Corals shriveled ●Had to move corals many times for better water flow ●Had to change tanks from the Frag to tank 8 ●Even with water flow we couldn’t find out why some of our corals shriveled

Future Directions ●Grow corals near power heads, so the corals get a “natural” amount of water flow ●Do not have other specimen in the tank if you know that a certain species eats any kind of coral

Works Cited Borneman, Eric H. Selection, Husbandry, and Natural History. N.p.: n.p., Print. In this book, we learned how mushroom corals split (a sexual reproduction). Calfo, Anthony. Book of Coral Propagation. Vol. 1. Monroeville: Reading Trees, Print. In this book we learned how mushroom corals split to reproduce Earkle, Joe. "Weblog post." Aquatic Castle. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct When reading this blog we learned the basics of all corals. We learned what kind of lighting the corals, propagating corals, different aggression of corals, and where you should place your corals in your tank. Reef Keeping. N.p., n.d. Web. 2 Oct In this article, we learned how to frag soft corals and mushrooms. This site gave us the idea to cut the mushroom corals off with the rock still attached so we can then frag the corals. Since mushroom corals have slimy texture, it is very hard to attach them to plugs for fragging, but if it is attached to a rock, the rock texture is easier to glue onto the plug. Saad, Sudirman. "Coral Reef Management Symposium on Coral Triangle Area." Soft Coral Growth: n. pag. Print. In this book, we learned how to frag different corals and how corals are fed Sprung, Julian. Coral Reference Guide. Coconut Grove: Rirdea, Print. In this book we learned about how coral branch out and reproduce and how to propagate different corals and mushrooms Syms, Craig, and Geoffrey P. Jones. "Soft Coral Growth." Oecologia (2001): n. pag. Print. In this article we learned how corals grow, reproduce, and how they are fed Theisen, Dan. "Soft Coral Fragging." Fish Channel. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Oct In this book we learned different methods of fragging, and how to feed corals