Live Aquaria- Diver's Den Behind the scene tour: The Corals

In case you've missed my previous posts on the facility's fish and inverts, here are their links:
Fish
Invertebrate
And for you coral fanatics here is the coral section of the facility. The Diver's Den facility of LiveAquaria is also the coral farm for this company. Here is a little background and fun facts of the place: http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general.cfm?general_pagesid=377

The coral display tank by the office in Diver's Den, very impressive and colorful.

A video of this tank:

First I want to show you this beautiful sps and lps coral display tank made of the aquaculture corals here at Diver's Den. This tank sits at the corner where the coral farm meets the offices.

Live Aquaria's aquacultured coral grow out farm

Here is a panoramic video view of the facility:

The coral farm here at the Diver's Den facility are made of numerous 3'X6' approximately 1' deep. The water is crystal clear and each bin houses a few turbo snails and a surgeonfish for algae patrol. Some of them are impressive adult chevron tangs! The corals all sit on a grid of egg crate that's boosted 4" off the bottom. I see the tangs darting back and forth from the top of the corals to the bottom of it. Some bins contain sand as they place lps or sps onto it. Some bins are bare bottom. Each of the LPS corals are carefully placed onto a ring of cut PVC pipe to prevent the sand from irritating it.
All of the corals that I could see had nice but not abnormally large polyp extensions.

A bin with crushed coral bottom housing non-photo synthetic corals

There are 2-3 bins like the one above housing the non-photo synthetic corals. And as you can see from the reflection, instead of Metal Halide or LED lighting, these bins use t-5 lighting for any misc. photosynthetic coral they need to place here. I also want to mention that one of these bins had a school of baby bangaii cardinal fish and it's a perfect environment since they feed these bins heavily with nutrient rich zooplankton to keep the non-photo synthetic corals happy.

A bin of marincultured sps corals

The bin above showcase a group of the marine cultured sps corals. As you can see they sit on a PVC ring with their sky#, price, and ID clearly labeled so you will always receive the correct item. The egg crate is 4" above the bare bottom with a chevron tang patrolling this bin for algae control. Each bin only houses one vegetarian fish, and with a turbo snail to supplement. You can see this bin features a 400W metal halide from the reflection. The halide sits on a track and is moved up and down the bin to provide the corals lighting from all angels instead of creating a "hotspot"
Here is a short "tease" of what these corals look like with the water flow and the light.

A bin with mixed marincultured sps coral and aquaculture frags

This bin also features some beautifully colored marine cultured sps coral, with some aquaculture sps & lips frags. Apologies for the really blue hue of the picture- I believe they use 20K bulbs for all the corals under metal halide.
I'm just going to post a few more photos here without much further description as they are pretty self-descriptive.

A bin with primarily aquacultures corals here in different sizes and shapes.

Amazing group of blasto frags here. I was really tempted to take them all!

How about a garden of hammers? all in different colors too!

Corals are sectioned of for pricing and ease of identification when workers here pick them for order. These lps and soft corals are under LED lighting as you can see from the reflection.

Another bin of amazing hammer corals! raise your hand if you want them all!

Group of long tentacle plates, the cutie at the bottom right is now in my tank!

And lastly a bare bottom bin featuring a garden of elegant corals!

2014-05-16 Species Spotlight- Derasa

This is the third Derasa clam I've kept in my personal aquarium.
My first clam came as a birthday present, a 5" derasa, had the tiger spotted marking.
Second one is similar to the one below, also a 5" derasa, with a slightly lighter color. That one unfortunately died due to disease introduced by another clam.

The current clam I have is between 8-9" and has beautiful stripes down its mantle.

In many people's opinion, Derasa clam is one of the hardiest, and easiest clams to keep.

In my opinion, squamosa is the hardiest and easiest, but Derasa clam is a close second.

Like all clams, it does require full reef water condition with extra care in calcium level for proper growth. It will also need slightly nutrient rich water (i.e. plenty of fish waste) to thrive as it absorbs phosphorous from water to build its body parts. Hence it's nearly impossible to keep clams in an aquarium with no fish in it.

Although Derasa doesn't require as much intensity in light as Maxima and Crocea do, it still need a decent light source. I've been able to keep it healthy under power compact at at least 5W/gallon with slower growth. Currently I have it under my AI sol blue LED fixture at around 70% at peak time and it's growing rapidly. Many others keep it under Metal Halide, which is more than enough light but can really suck up your energy bill.

Unlike Maxima and Crocea, you should place this clam on a sand bed. And give it plenty of room to "rotate" as it has a mind of its own in choosing what direction it wants to face. Lastly, keep the tank free of potential clam eaters. I had a flame angel who would nip at my Squamosa before. That flame took its own life one day, and my flame angel II has been very well fed and has not touched the clam.

One other conscience complier is that most of these clams you find in the trade are now aquacultures with minimum to none impact to the reef. And the bonus of aquacultured livestock is they are far hardier than those wild collected.

Neon green birdnest ORA

ORA is one of the more reputable marine aquaculture companies that provide a broad variety of corals, fish, and inverts. I strongly recommend ordering and purchasing their product as they practice responsible breeding and marineculture to reduce the stress of overfishing. This is an ORA neon green birdnest I picked up a few weeks back in the LAS ( local aquarium store) it glows with neon green under the 420nm actinic and magenta LED lighting