Hi Everyone,
Great thread.
My farm has been running for about 3 years now. Im in the process of building a new facility as we speak.
I love seeing so many people all Gung Ho about coral farming, but I also like to remind people that it is no easy venture. Unless you are going to be growing a few easy to raise corals in your basement to sell locally, get ready for years of hard work, spending tons of money and very little to no real income for at least 2-3 years. It sounds really easy when you write the business plan down, but like any other business, there are a ton of other factors that you have never thought about.
MAtts remark about getting suppliers for broodstock is a huge issue. Most people dont realize how large a broodstock you actually need to carry to maintain a sustainable harvest. Try getting 1000-2000 pcs of xenia. You will never find a supplier. Even if you do, they will not be from the same place and you risk inconsistancy, disease and may have some allelopathy issues. The only real way to do it is to start with one colony and grow it out. I started with about 10 heads and now have close to 1500. It took me 2 years(slower than usual since I had to sell alot along the way), but now I have the broodstock I need. The same really goes for the rest of my brood.
Pests and plagues are another huge issue(another reason to stay with softies). I lost my first years broodstock of acropora's to acro eating flatworms. Belive me when I say that none of the cures listed on the net actually work. When you have 2000-3000 frags strew about your system it is physically impossible to get every single pest once they are in there. Starting off with a few clean colonies is the only way to go. There really cant be a coral farm with pest issues. Anyone selling stony frags with red bugs, acro flatworms or monti eating nudibranches is not farming them. Your frags will never grow to a profitable level with those pests in your tanks. I think alot of these so called farmers from the pacific are giving farm raised frags a bad name. A friend of mine is putting one of these facilities up right now. All he is going to do is get a large colony from the wild, break it into 2"-3" frags, put it back in the ocean to grow a bit and sell them after they have encrusted. I hope importers and wholesalers will realize this fact one day. I leave every stony coral that come into my posession in QT for at least 3-4 months under heavy scrutiny before I even contemplate letting it go into my stony systems.
That was a long rant, especially when it comes to sps corals. I should have started by saying " dont waste your time trying to grow SPS species!". Unless you are going to sell retail, your time and overhead will cost you more in the end.
Someone brought up the point about actual wholesale prices. If you are interested in growing coral as your only source of income you are most likely going to eventually find yourself selling to the wholesalers. Remember that they have to make money too. The final sale prices of the corals you grow will most likely be much lower than you expected. A wholesaler who brings in big colonies of zoanthids for under $20 is not going to pay you $10 for a 2" frag that takes you 6 months to grow. Finding that out after you have spent thaousand of dollars and months if not years of your time is no picnic.
A huge factor that is rarely discussed, but is enormously important in determining profitablility is ratio of broodstock to production. A simple X ammount fo this broodstock produces Y ammount of frags that need to be grown out for Z ammount of time. Without that info there really is no basis to figure out your business plan. You can write down that you will build a greenhouse with this many corals and that many gallons, but how do you know that it will produce the ammount of corals you think it will?
Its taken me a long time to figure out that my xenia regenerates after being cut in 30 days, that my 50 colony broodstock of kenya tree only give me 50-100 frags per month and that I need 600 mother colonies and 200 sq feet of growing area to produce 500-800 frags of zoanthids per month. This is the kind of info we really need and this is why I strongly recommend that everyone interested in coral farming start small and works their way up.
