Fake maricultured coral?

[CAPSLOCK]

Does it still produce the same result if maricultured corals are grown to a larger colony size, then fragged and glued anew immediately prior to selling? Would this make any difference with regard to the environmental impact? Again, assuming they were grown to the larger size via mariculture - not saying that Dong's were or weren't.

If you're just looking at the frag, it could either be a fragged maricultured colony or a chopped wild colony - I'm not sure how you'd tell. I guess it comes down to whether the source has any scruples. If they REALLY lacked scruples, what's to stop them from sticking aged mariculture tags / cement bases on newly chopped wild corals?

 

[saltwaterB]

I think the big point here that Dong was getting at is that either way...when one gets a maricultured Coral, one expects that it has had time to "grow out" in the ocean and heal from being fragged...in sense making it a maricultured coral regardless of where the original frag was taken from... AS the only way to get the Coral to mariculture is to take a frag or the colony as broodstock. But I know first hand that many farms are going around and just fragging off of enormous colonies...this is great as it is very low impact. But they need to let it grow out for the proper time (IMO) But in these cases it could literally be a case of supply and demand, and that the demand for the cultured corals by suppliers like Live Aquaria are far greater than what their source can supply by standard and true methods???
Again....depending on the circumstance one could consider this wrong or not????
Very interesting, and I will start to keep a close eye on some of these pieces as they come in....again, tracking it down may be the harder part...
As at the wholesalers in LA...they get hundreds of boxes of Corals in from all over the world several times a week, and once they go in to general population it could be impossible to tell one source from another....not to mention some of the farms are small and sell to a larger exporter...so tracing it further may require being on the ground somewhere in Indonesia....

 

[reefstarter]

Hi , Im not a doctor but I play one on TV