Midnight Sun Aquaculture began with a life-long love of the ocean. We have been keeping coral and marine fish for well over a decade, and truly enjoy bringing a small piece of the reef into our daily lives.
In early 2007 we decided to take it one step further. Aquaculture and mariculture represent the future of the hobby, and allow the reef-keeping community to enjoy live coral while reducing the environmental impact. We feel that the coral reefs of the world are some of our greatest natural treasures, and suspect that our customers share that belief. The number of wild-collected corals imported to the United States is well into the millions, and the mortality and long-term survival rates for these are extremely low. Aquaculture allows us to reduce these wild collections, and at the same time offer specimens that are fully acclimated to aquarium life.
We are always looking for new aquaculture partners, and continually improving our propagation techniques. So far, we’ve had outstanding success with various zoanthids, palys, leathers, mushrooms and anemones; in the future we hope to expand our portfolio even more.
Our primary sales focus is two-fold: Online Retail and Wholesale. While our facility is not open to the public, we do offer a selection of our coral through our online store for those who do not have a local retailer of aquacultured products. Additionally, our online store offers products from some of our favorite manufacturers – these equipment sales help subsidize our aquaculture propagation efforts.
If you do have a local retailer that carries aquacultured products (hopefully ours!), we encourage you to give them the opportunity to earn your business.
If you are interested in becoming a reseller, please visit our Wholesale Customer page for more information.
Our Facility
The grow-out portion of our facility encompasses approximately 1000 square feet, with over 400 square feet of useable, high-density growing area. At any given time, we have the capacity for about 12,000 units. We're running 16,000 watts of metal halide lighting, and two 100 gallon per minute pumps to circulate 2,500 gallons of water.
We’re using equipment from AquaC, AquaMedic, Current USA, Aquactic EcoSystems, and AquaFX, plus a lot of items that have been repurposed for aquaculture use… parts from restaurant supply stores, farm equipment, random electronics, etc. To date, we’ve used over 1500 PVC fittings and about a gallon each of glue and primer.
Feel free to contact us if you're interested in setting up an Aquaculture facility, we'll be happy to answer your questions.
Our Photography
A lot of online coral retailers take pictures that are too good to be true. We know, because we’ve bought coral that way in the past. Here’s what we use:
Nikon D80
Nikon Nikkor AF-S 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 Lens.
Nikon Nikkor AF-D 60mm Macro Lens - for ultra close up shots
Nikon SB-600 Speedlight
Circular Polarizing Filter – all of our shots are through the water, taken from above. The polarizer
helps cut down on glare from the water.
We shoot everything at 200 ISO, 10.2 MP Fine Resolution JPEG, Auto White Balance. The D80 is a great camera, and we let it sort out the rest of the details. Photos are usually taken under 1250W combined 13000K and 20000K Metal Halide, and we use a 24W T5 Actinic in some shots for accent color. We feel this gives the best representation of the conditions in a display aquarium. Other shots are under simple 13000K MH lighting.
That’s it! We don’t use PhotoShop - our livestock images are cropped / resized and posted as-is. Put simply, we want the coral to look as good in your tank as they do in our pictures!
A note on Actinic lighting: Some online retailers claim that no actinic lighting is used in their photos,
or "neglect" to mention it. Here are our thoughts: First, sand is not
blue... if it glows blue, they're lying to you. Second, Ricordea do
not glow in the dark, nor do they appear ultra-fluorescent under
daylight conditions. Some will slightly fluoresce under 20000K MH, but
they won't glow. Our experience is that most display systems use some
degree of UV lighting, and we add a small amount (24W compared to 1250W
of MH) for our pictures. You are most likely running a higher
percentage of UV lighting, and these mushrooms will be even brighter in
your system. Again, please feel free to ask any questions before you
buy!
If you have any questions about our photos, please don't hesitate to ask.
