What's happening at SECORE?

[dbartco]

See what our Mike Henley and NADC's Andrew Pulver are doing down in Puerto Rico. See daily updates at www.secore.org

 

 

Mike will be back for the Zoo social. Maybe we get to see a few palmeta tiles?

[Coral Hind]

Thanks for sharing the site. I saw the "settlement tiles" in several of the tanks at the zoo this summer and I was puzzled as to what they were for. Now I know!

[OUsnakebyte]

Thanks for posting this Doug - something I meant to do before I left an just ran out of time.

 

I don't know if everyone kept up with the weblog, but we had a great spawn this year - MUCH better than last year. Settlement for me is going well (I'm starting to see primary polyps in my sleep...), and I see zoox in many of the settlers. I even saw one polyp today with secondary polyp formation!!! But, the next three months will be the worst in terms of die off. So, we'll see what happens.

 

Hopefully there will be some left for everyone to see at the social.

 

Thanks for sharing the site. I saw the "settlement tiles" in several of the tanks at the zoo this summer and I was puzzled as to what they were for. Now I know!

 

Yup, trying to grow coralline - chemical flypaper for larvae.

 

 

Cheers

Mike

Edited September 8, 2008 by OUsnakebyte

[ctenophore]

I talked with Rich @ ReefreshH20 at macna for a while about new plugs for my farm, one of the things he was working on was a mineral coating for their cell-pore ceramic that very quickly induces coralline growth. He claimed that they were getting near 100% coverage in as little as 3 weeks. I'm not sure where you're getting the SECORE plugs from, but it may be worth looking into his ceramic media. Also you could probably inoculate those porous plugs with various strains of bacteria (prodibio etc) which may greatly reduce nuisance algae growth on them, as well as create bacterial snow to help feed the new recruits. The same might even be true for zoox, soak the plugs in a zoox culture right before settling the corals; they might get infected quicker if a lot of cells are concentrated in the media on which they are settling.