A recent scientific paper on coral farming was published by Zac Forsman and many colleagues on the effects of light, flow, and artificial foods on the growth of corals. The goal of the coral farming study was to see if light, water motion, and food could be tuned differently for three Hawaiian stony corals used for this experiment:Montipora capitata, Pocillopora damicornis, and Porites compressa.
珊瑚农业的结果research were quite interesting, and very noteworthy for the average sps hobbyist. While you should read the entire nine-page paper yourself, the parts that interested me was the effect of flow on light stress, and which foods showed increased growth in the farmed corals.
关于光和流动，很明显，有些珊瑚很好地适应了低流量的强光，而另一些则没有。虽然研究指出，这种蒙蒂普拉物种的流量减少了流动减少的抑制作用，但对于其他珊瑚也是Acropora物种，也是如此。
“ Porites Compressa在高光，低流量的条件下增长最佳，而M. Capitata在相同的条件下做得最坏……。高光的流量减少了M. Capitata的漂白作用，这在以前已经看到抑制照片的研究（Finelli等，2005； Nakamura等，2005）。这种减少可能是由于多种因素所致，例如降低表面湍流，气体交换率增加或温度略有降低。”
最有趣的发展是珊瑚喂养。“这项研究表明，一些市售的人造珊瑚食品对某些巩膜珊瑚的生长产生了巨大的积极影响。根据增长数据（按重量和流离失所），烤面包，礁辣椒和礁石流动增加了平均增长率M. Capitata和P. Damicornisfragments (Figure 4). Although being one of the more expensive and natural products, the tanks fed with the Oyster Eggs did not differ significantly from the control tank. Unfortunately, they didn’t see the same benefits with MicroVert, MarineSnow Plankton Diet, Phytoplan, and Salifert Coral Food on these three species.
“在制造商的建议剂量下，我们看到这些食物对高于阴性对照（过滤的海水）的珊瑚生长没有影响。重要的是要注意，该实验是在开放系统中进行的，具有粗糙的海水，这些结果在封闭的系统中可能有所不同。”
It is worth noting that we are talking about three distinct species of coral here. The success or failures of any coral food cannot be surmised by the growth results of such a limited set of corals. We have to consider that that food preferance and polyp size will differ among sps, softies, and LPS of course. As the authors stated eloquently,
“Strong species-specific effects imply that corals are adapted to specialize on a particular niche in a highly heterogeneous environment. Further studies are needed to explain the mechanisms behind these differences (such as polyp and particle size, tentacle and or nematocysts size and arrangement, or zooxanthellae type and density).”
Nevertheless, the important thing to take away from such a study is that coral farming can definitely tailor food, flow, and light specific to coral species to optimize growth rates. Considering the mass popularity ofAcroporaspecies, we would love to see this test repeated on several different species of Acros.
参考：Forsman等。al。2012。珊瑚种植：光，流和人造食品的影响. Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom.
