Notes from Calfo's Intuitive Coral Propagation

I'll admit it took me a few aquarium shows to realize the real benefit is not getting close to the trendy new hardware or even buying the frags - some real long term benefit can be had by going to hear the heavy-weights in our hobby speak. What follows is an unedited translation of the chicken-scratch I wrote down while listening to Anthony Calfo speak at MACNA last Saturday. The best nuggets came during his improvisation when fielding questions from the crowd. Most of my notes were taken during this time. Enjoy.


Anthony Calfo gets introduced at MACNA 2010

Matt's Notes from Anthony Calfo's Intuitive Coral Propagation- Sex and Salvation

- DIY Coral Feeder: 1" diameter plastic tube and half soda* (2 liter) bottle
* He is from the midwest - everyone says 'soda' there

- Funny story with his 240 gallon and wine - moral: skimmers are indiscriminate and efficient

- Wet or Dry Skimmate?
Wet skimmate helps with particulates before it breaks down into dissolved organics

ACROS - do better with fish, fish urine, fish poo. Non-typical fish such as eels and lion fish are even good as they can hold a lot of food

IMPELLER SHEAR OVERRATED
- early studies came to negative conclusions based on non-marine organisms
- found very little planula and plankton removed with typical aquarium pumps
Some fun math I just found:
How fluid properties affect mixer & impeller design: one relatively new impeller design--the counterflow impeller--offers some advantages, particularly, for the mixing of non-Newtonian fluids. | Goliath Business News


LPS - considered 'awesome' worldwide
- need our help in the wild - don't ship well
- love fatty foods (feed them!) huge polyps = food
- reproduce well (asexual plantation) torch, hammer

Dendro - dependent on food

TANNINS IN WATER MUST BE REMOVED (is he talking about wine again?)
- light intensity: 30% loss from yellow water
- he regularly cleans off his bulbs (on Mondays)
- RECOMMENDS CARBON / OZONE!

FAVIA BRAINS - need good quality light and feeding

WE MUST ACTIVELY FRAG MUSSIDAE (acan, blasto, lobo)!
- low light

Pectiniidae - peter out - hard to feed
- like dissolved organics that are hard to replicate in aquarium

FOOD
- antidotal evidence that feeding may replace need to rely on water supplements?!?
- use whole foods (mysis, spirulina)

Lose heads on a hammer coral colony? Separate (frag) healthy heads from dead ones - grow back faster


IODINE WITH SOFT CORALS GENERALLY BENEFICIAL
(some within family don't like it - there are a couple exceptions - need to follow up with him on the one he mentioned)

Trachy
Open Brain coral
- eats easily
-grows buds that you need to break free when dime size (don't have the things in the wild that would do this for it)

Fugiidae
- low light, easy to feed
(exception: long tentacle plate coral)

Poritidae
- tricky, sensitive ( a couple exceptions)

Blue Coral
- not common, but rewarding
- brown when alive - will develop long fuzzies when happy
- keep hands out of tank

Gorgonians
- specialist coral, difficult
- under a lot of pressure in the wild
- purple is the easiest to keep

Zoas
- small polyp - need light - don't farm well
- large polyp - easy to feed - less light - less popular


Read Anthony's books:
Reading Trees Publications



Notes taken 9/4/10.




matt

 

Thank for info.

Big Polyps = FOOD. That makes sense.

 

Are you sure the photo wasn't from another speaker or convention? "Sex and Salvation".



I always thought you didn't want many fish with SPS. Thats cool info to learn.

Did he recommend any fatty foods for LPS? I feed squid which is 19% protien and only a few % fat. A friend tried mussels and said that nothing responded to the meat.

 

can you elaborate on the skimmer story? thanks

 

Just a shot in the dark here, but alcohol is less dense than water, a skimmer should easily remove the alcohol, and most of the organics from the wine.

In other words, his skimmate was red and somewhat more tasty than normal. ;D

 

Matt thanks for the info, great stuff.

 

That makes me think of using a skimmer to distill alcohol lol.

 

Hmmmm..... So in the first part, im guessing he recommends a wet skimmate as it takes out the particles before they break down?

the 2nd part.. Acro's do better in a tank with a decent ammt of fish poo and urine than they would do in a lightly stocked tank or a system devoid of fish? that is interesting. almost like they do better with nutrients in the water vs the low nutrient tanks we are trying to achieve with vodka dosing. this in itself is most interesting to me. I ran a high nutrient system for years and grew lots of acros pretty good under 440 vho's

 

Good info, think I'm going to aim for more of a wet skim and lay off the Vodka dosing...at least for the tank.

 

Thanks!

That was it pretty much, yep!

You are welcome. I will try to do this more when I can... and better!

lol!

Yes! Well said.

But I should convey that his attitude was not 'My way, or the highway.' He saw +/- on many subjects. He is an open-minded hobbyist.