What's the hype with Walt smith corals?

[TimT]

Hi Everyone,

Every shipment of coral will be different when you are dealing with wild collection. They collect from many different reefs around Fiji to distribute the collection pressure. Walt Smith is MAC certified.

Since the beginning of the year Fiji has been struck by numerous tropical storms. They have caused lots of flooding and siltation of the reefs. This has caused the acros to take a hit and they lose colour and strength.

Certain times of the year the water is very hot(89 - 91°f) so this tends to weaken the sps as well.

Walt goes to great lengths to provide a high quality product. He used to use 1000watt 20k Radium Halides over the holding tanks to help the corals keep their colour while in the warehouse. Earlier this year he upgraded to LED lights as power is not cheap in Fiji.

Here is a pic of an A sarmentosa that I brought in about 6 months ago. It came in this colour and has not browned out or faded. Granted a green coral is kinda boring but there are some amazing pieces as well. It is kept under a 400watt 20k Radium Halide.


Here is another pic of some WSI acros from last year.


Walt is putting a lot of effort into the farming of corals. These are smaller colonies, similar in size to the corals from the ocean based farms around Bali. These will do much better in captivity as they are smaller and will ship better.


Cheers,
Tim