by Forrest A. Young, B.S., M.S.

As we are well into the beginnings of the 21st century, many of us in the marine aquarium hobby are beginning to realize that the sea is not a limitless source of products for our hobby. Further relatively recent advances in aquarium keep technology and aquaculture of many of the ingredients to the marine aquarium has led to a whole new industry in the marine aquarium trade.

We established a one acre live rock aquaculture site in the Florida Bay, north of Marathon in 1995. It has been interesting to follow the successes and failures that we have experieced, the regulatory difficulties and eventual process of achieving a quality product.

As you may know, in the late 80's a lot of interest was focused on live rock collections in Florida and the ultimate result was that the Florida Marine Fish comission voted to ban the harvest of live rock effective in 1993/94.

Part of the mitigation that was offered by the state was the offering of selected aquaculture leases to qualified applicants that could meet the stringent lease conditions. During 1990 to 1994 we applied for a lease application with the state, made the requisite trips to Tallahassee to meet with Governor's Cabinet Aids and finally recieved the ultimate approval for the site lease by the cabinet and Governor. Many state agencies, including the Dept. of Environmental Protection, Florida Marine Patrol and the Dept. of State Lands provided unceasing support for this application and without their cooperation and assistance, we never would have been successful.

The first rocks went into the water the spring of 1995?? and we subsequently placed about 30,000 lbs of material into the water. During the course of successive years, we added more rocks as funding for the work was available in our limited budget. Initial success on the site was far less than we had earlier envisioned due in part to two hurricanes and ultimately far slower growth than we had seen on the test sites that we had established by special permits with the DEP in the late 80's and early 90's.

Test marketing of an algae-based rock during 1997 and 1998 was fairly disappointing as the aquarium hobby was and still is, accustomed to recieving live rocks out of the wild, largely from the south Pacific and since our product by its essential nature and source of quarried materials, is denser and not as encrusted with corals and other marinelife as is the wild product.

However during 2000, maturation of the rocks on the site resulted in a much improved product that has the beginings of living coral buttons that will ultimately be a very good product and be totally environmentally friendly as no wild habitat is harmed or disturbed in the producing of this aquacultured product.

We have found that the encrustation of coral buttons and other more desirable benthios species tends to appear higher in the water column based upon elevation away from the actual bottom. It is my hypothesis that being away from the natural siltation that occurs near thre bottom accounts largely for the phenomenon.

Further, the longer the rocks are in the sea, the more diversity of species is found on the typical rock. There appears to be a natural succession of colonization that initally goes from "fouling" organisms and macro algaes to more desirable species such as sponges, tunicates, bivavles and of course corals, tube works and anemones.

It is our current assessment that at least 4 years if not actually 5 or 6 years are required to really produce the highest quality rock that is very similar to the rocks that we used to harvest from the wild.

The establishement of the biological activity, eg de-nitrifying bacteria, occurs typically during the first twelve to eighteen months, and while this is the essential ingredient to the successful maintenance of the reef aquarium, hobbyist generally prefer the greater diversity that is found on rocks that have been in the sea for longer periods. This does two things to the producer, one it increases the planning period between placement in the sea and harvest and subsequently the ultimate costs of the product as the longer the time between the investment in placement of rocks in the sea and return of that investment in harvest of the rocks from the sea, the greater the costs to the aquaculturist.

One of the greatest difficulties that we have experienced as a producer of this product it that is is very difficult to produce a product that is currently cost competitive with the inexpensive product that is taken out of the wild. No investment in time or resources is required, other than the actual harvest for wild harvested material and until this additional effort required by aquaculture is fully appreciated by the hobbyist, and that this costs is willing to be made, the production of aquacultured material will be inhernetly compromised by this cost problem.