- Right behind me is a million dollars
worth of retail coral.
And we are in the largest aquaculture coral facility
in the country.
There's so much here, it's gonna be amazing.
I'm gonna learn a lot, I hope you guys are too.
And as you guys can see,
there are tons of different corals here.
Let's find Steven,
because he's gotta tell us some stuff about this,
so I know what the heck is going on.
And this is Steven here. - Hey.
- And of course, first off I want,
how many species of coral do you have?
- Propagate around 3000 different coral species here,
between hard coral, soft corals, anemones,
and all kinds of cool stuff.
About 3000 different ones.
- How many gallons of water?
You have this facility here,
but you also have a retail facility, as well.
How many gallons of water do you go through?
- Roughly around 30,000 gallons.
And it goes through about 5,000 gallons a week
of water changes.
- So I tell you what, I'm trying to learn about fish.
By the way, do they call coral fish?
- No. - So what do they call corals?
Just corals. - Just corals.
- But they do eat?
- Yeah, so they're actually an animal,
because they do have calcium build,
they have DNA, all this good stuff.
They're not a plant. That's why you're able to cut 'em,
and actually frag 'em.
Really, really interesting stuff.
- And speaking about fragging 'em,
I'm gonna get an opportunity to do that later in the video.
These corals can be extremely delicate.
Of course, we all know about some of the reefs
that are in danger, like the Great Barrier Reef.
Tell me what is going on.
What is happening with the corals in the oceans today?
- Because of global warming,
and the rising temperatures of water,
it's actually causing the corals to bleach out.
They can adjust, but it takes time.
And that's why we're actually seeing the reefs
grow back again, which we didn't know, which is really cool.
- So when the temperature changed, they started to die.
Now they're starting to adjust to this warmer temperature,
and they're starting to come back?
- [Steven] Yes, they're starting to come back again.
The corals are coming back,
which is what we didn't know was gonna happen.
- If I wanted to get into coral, where would I start?
- topshelfaquatics.com.
♪ Hold up, hey ♪
(both laughing)
- Where would you start?
- Honestly, the forums are amazing for our industry.
reef2reef.com is the largest forum in the world.
Believe it or not, in this industry.
So any given time, seven to 10,000 people are on this forum.
- So people like me, newbies like me,
can ask questions. - Everything.
It's amazing.
- And they're not gonna be like "You're an idiot."
- [Steven] No. - Okay, see, all right.
I definitely want to get into this.
This is absolutely incredible.
We've got so much to think about.
Let's just keep moving.
Steven, what in the heck is going on here?
This, to me, looks like something out of a horror film
or something like that.
This is filtration?
- Yeah.
So what this is, is this is a macroalgae that we grow,
that consumes nutrients in the water.
It grows, it's a plant.
You're able to throw it in there,
and it sucks all the dirty poop out of the water.
- Oh, well, that's always something good to have
when you have a bunch of really fragile coral.
To me, this looks like an anemone, is it?
- [Steven] No, it's a coral.
That's a coral.
- And what kind of crazy coral-
When you think of coral, I think of almost like a rock,
but these things are moving around like crazy.
I mean, there's little brains over here.
What are these?
- So this particular coral that you're seeing here,
called the Euphyllia coral, the family, or a torch coral.
The cool thing about these,
is these branch like a little tree,
and able to frag them and actually propagate them,
because they split out little babies.
- How old are these here?
- It's kind of hard to say, but I would say from one frag,
to a mini colony, take a year or so.
And then we're obviously cutting those down.
- And if you were gonna buy this frag right here,
what is that worth?
- It's about 500 bucks.
- Oh.
So these are real anemones here.
Just thinking that this is a lot of money.
I'm gonna take a wild guess, and I bet you I'm way off.
Is there $20,000 worth of anemones in there?
- It's more.
- More by how much?
- Well, we sell the black widows for about two to $300.
And they're about that big.
There's probably a thousand of them in there.
- Holy crap.
Snake are awesome, but I might be jumping ship
over to the coral world.
- So we actually put this in here,
and all the bacteria from the systems go to that.
So it jumpstarts the tank cycle for somebody else.
So we actually sell this. - So you can sell this to-
- To cycle bacteria into somebody's aquarium,
so it helps jumpstart that cycle.
- Let's say you use one of these jumpstarters, right.
How long before you set that up,
before you can put your first coral frag?
- [Steven] I would say two months.
- [Speaker] Two months? - [Steven] Two months.
- [Speaker] That's not bad.
- [Steven] No, it's not that bad.
- All right, I think I'm ready.
Like I mentioned before guys,
this is the beginning days of my snake world,
when I was learning about things.
I'm so curious.
And I've noticed that you have a bunch of fish in here,
and I'm wondering why?
Is there a reason you have this type of fish?
What are they doing? Or are they just in there?
- Because we're trying to essentially replicate the ocean,
the reason there's fish, is because they poop.
And when they poop, it feeds the coral.
These fish, we're gonna feed them, they're gonna poop,
the corals are gonna get fed.
However, you also get algae and so forth.
And then these particular types of fish, control the algae.
So they eat the algae, and it's just a nice cycle process.
- [Speaker] So it's just like a little-
It's like a little ecosystem inside every single aquarium.
Have you ever been to the beach,
and you see something like this,
right on the beach with the foam?
This is actually what they call a protein skimmer.
And Steven, what is inside that?
- Fish poop.
- So, enjoy yourself next time you go to the beach.
If you notice, there's actually blue lights
on all of these aquariums.
And I'm wondering why?
Assuming it's making something better for the coral.
- Yeah, so essentially, different types of UV light.
And what it does, is it helps the coral grow,
and then it fluoresces.
So, different types of UV, it's gonna look prettier.
If we were to take this out in natural sunlight,
it's gonna be brown. - Brown.
- So not really that pleasing.
- So that's the thing.
And you gotta remember,
that as the UV light is penetrating the ocean,
the deeper it gets, where the corals actually are,
there's gonna be filtration of the actual water.
So you're kind of changing the UV light.
This is kind of a manipulation of that,
in order to produce the most incredible corals out there.
See, I already sound like an expert.
- These lights actually replicate the sun.
They do sunset and sunrise.
Can actually do different moon cycles,
because corals will only spawn during certain moon cycles.
Well, these will actually replicate that.
- And how much does this light right here cost?
- $950 retail per light.
- For one light, 950.
So there you go.
You got one, two, three, four, five, six.
- There's about 300 in here.
- It's about 300 in here.
You know, that's easy.
Just a nice little suburban home in Metro Detroit.
So these are what they call coral frags here,
just little fragments of coral.
Now, interestingly enough, you see this coral right here.
This is actually grafted together,
to create a really cool kind of mutant coral.
It's similar to ball python breeding, in a way, right?
- Yeah, exactly, yeah.
- So what's the process of creating these frags?
- A lot of trial and error.
So just putting different types of coral,
or sometimes in your reef,
you'll just get an abundance of growth.
And you'll notice that the corals aren't killing each other,
and they start growing in.
That gives you an opportunity to kind of graft that coral,
and realize, oh wow, these actually will grow together,
instead of killing each other.
- So essentially what they're doing,
is they're gonna put the corals together,
glue 'em onto an actual stand,
and then they're gonna eventually grow together,
and make this amazing combination here.
Not all corals will actually graft.
See this little coral here,
that looks like a little orange or pink brain?
This is actually what it looks like as an adult.
How long does it take to go from that to that?
- Well, there's a lot of different variables depending
on the equipment, and stability of the salt water
in the aquarium, and minor trace elements,
not to get too confusing.
But, it could be seven months to a year and a half,
depending on.
- And the difference of cost between that and that?
- [Steven] $40 retail, $400 retail.
- [Speaker] Only 10 times. - [Steven] Yeah.
- So we have our saw here.
- How much should I cut?
- I'll show you, you can kind of see it.
Actually grew, the coral grew up and under,
which is really cool.
So what we could do, and it's gonna be kind of slimy,
when you hit the saw,
essentially every round piece is a mouth,
so we don't want to go through that mouth.
We kind of want to go around the mouth.
- Okay. - Okay?
- It's a diamond blade.
Don't have to worry about it cutting you.
We'll get a frag plug, and some glue,
and we'll let you glue it and throw it in there.
- All right.
Can't screw this up, right?
- [Speaker] You look crazy right now, dude.
Get to work, Bry.
(saw whirring)
- Wow, he's an expert.
Look at this.
- [Speaker] Yeah, put some water on there for you.
(saw whirring)
- Boom.
- Dude, that's perfect. - [Speaker] Right.
- If you ever need a part-time job, come to me an I'll-
- [Speaker] Dude, I'm serious, though.
- I'm might go a full-time job on you here.
- And you see how slimy it is? - Way cool.
- [Speaker] Look, so the coral's actually right now,
cause it notices it's in the stress environment,
it's actually sliming to protect itself.
Really, really cool.
You can just throw it right in here.
- [Speaker] Sorry buddy.
- And then what we're gonna do,
we'll get you a frag plug and some glue,
and then we'll put it on the frag plug and glue it up.
- All right. Put my name on this one.
- What we're gonna do is just throw a little bit
of glue right there on the frag plug.
So it's a super thick gel, super glue.
So what's cool is this glue actually will adhere underwater.
- Underwater? - Yeah.
- Okay, so now I just put this on here.
- Just pop that right on there.
Obviously it's a little big, but it's no big deal.
- [Speaker] Boom.
- [Speaker] And you drop it right here in this new water.
You can let it lay down and everything.
- Okay, cool. - Hey man, done.
- Good job.
- Everything gets labeled with where the coral goes
inside the aquarium, the lighting intensity,
and the name of it.
It's all wizzy wig and these little protected cups,
and gets shipped out next day.
- Look at that. Look at all these things, man.
- [Speaker] Don't touch them. - Look at this, man.
- That's a macroalgae that we were looking over there.
- This is the filter. - Yeah, sure is.
- The filter stuff.
Yeah, that stuff-
So once you put this in your filter,
how long would it take to grow?
I mean, is it gonna-
- Depending on how the nutrients are,
and if its turned over,
that can grow into a ball really quickly.
- Wow, nice.
Now what does this cost?
- 34, 20, 30 bucks, depending on the size.
- I just wanna take this home and put in my bathtub.
Now you said that a lot of the corals are actually
from the Indonesian area, that's like the primary area.
- Yeah, so, all up and down.
So Australia to Indonesia, up to Solomon Islands,
corals in that range, 98% of the corals in this facility
came probably from there.
- [Speaker] Wow, that's amazing.
Take a look at these corals right here.
You can see these little kind of like,
articulating arms here.
That's actually a defense for them.
They're actually reaching out, and stinging other corals.
Now these ones are relatively similar,
so there's not a problem.
But if there was a foreign coral that had an issue,
they could actually sting it,
and it could literally kill the other coral.
It's kind of a protection thing.
You don't think of corals as an organism that actually
fights for life, but you can see it right here.
And it's absolutely amazing.
- [Steven] Another really cool thing
that I think you guys might like.
So this particular coral is called the holy grail.
$1,500 per head.
Coolest thing about this,
is this was our first truly spawned coral
in a system that we found a little baby not even
a year and a half ago. And what is mind blowing for us,
is why this coral can go from here, to this size,
in such a short period of time,
versus when we bring coral from the wild,
it takes a lot longer for it to grow.
So this is one of our-
- What's going on with this thing?
- Why is it growing-
But it's used to synthetic sea water,
use to synthetic light, so it's growing.
- Would you think that if you frag this one out,
it would do the same thing?
Or if you've done that yet? - We don't know.
This is literally, we haven't had a chance to frag it yet.
Don't know.
This is very, very interesting coral, so.
- That is awesome.
Holy grail. I swear to God, some of these frags
looks like Laurie's Christmas cookies.
And the view from the top,
it's absolutely a completely different view.
See all the colors, different frags.
I mean, different sizes, the different just, all shapes.
Absolutely incredible.
Again, I'm just getting into this world, but so amazing.
And every day that I learn more, I just get more excited
about the future of keeping these types of things.
I mean, wow.
This place is definitely top shelf.
Speaking of Top Shelf Aquatic,
I'm gonna put the link in the description
to all their social media stuff.
Definitely go show them some love.
And hey, if you want a cool frag,
I mean there's no better place to get 'em, right?
So when you get into these, you're going into quarantine
to make sure that they're really healthy
before they go out to the hobbyist.
- Yeah. - So how long is a quarantine?
Let's say when you're doing the captive culturing of 'em.
- If we bring a coral from the ocean, first of all,
most of the time, it's not wild,
it's called mirror cultures.
That means they're taking a small fragment off the reef,
and growing it in the ocean.
That's called mirror culture.
Once we get that coral in here, by the time we get it,
we quarantine it, we condition it, and it gets growth.
Typically we'll take almost up to a year.
- A year? - Yeah.
- And before it can start growing,
and then we can just cut a little fragment off.
- Is a lot of the frags here,
stuff that was actually produced here?
- Obviously everything probably started as a frag,
a very small piece of coral,
and it has grown over the last 10 years into our stock.
- So my next question is, when did you start?
And when did it become like this?
I mean, how long you been doing this?
- We started in 2010, but we weren't really farming.
We were just hobbyists that had the love of coral.
A couple years ago, Indonesia got shut down.
It changed the whole industry.
The whole industry kind of went downhill.
We were lucky enough to have my business partner,
that I actually disagreed with originally,
we had a small farm.
And it really blew us up because we had all these corals
that nobody else could really get,
'cause we were growing it here.
- Especially with the shut down.
- So those two years of Indonesia being shut down,
really helped Top Shelf really grow,
and we were able to go into this,
and just kept growing and growing and growing, so.
- [Speaker] It's so amazing, the kind of similarities
between reptile and the aquatic community.
Because we all go through the same thing,
and it's just crazy to see how similar they actually are.
And then this is actually the retail store here.
I mean, take a look at this.
Unbelievable.
Again, I have dreams of the places like this,
all kinds of cool fish.
Aw, check these out, little trigger fish right here.
I love clown fish, you guys know that.
So there's some beautiful clown fish in here.
Got some blue tangs right here.
I'm acting like I know a lot about fish,
but the truth is, I really don't know.
Lionfish right here.
That's pretty cool.
I've never actually seen small lion fish
all together like that.
That's really cool-
Kept going, I mean, how impressive is this place?
So you can not only buy wholesale fish,
you can come to the retail place and look at yellow tangs.
Interestingly enough, yellow tangs used to be pretty common.
Now you can't get 'em.
So now a yellow tang this size,
now used to only be maybe 30 to $50, $400.
It's absolutely incredible.
Oh, remember we actually, when we were at Sea Quest,
we fed one of these that was a lot bigger.
I don't know what the heck it is,
but it's weird with those big red eyes.
They've got all the coral frags here
that people can buy retail, which is really cool.
Pro place for sure.
And then this is where of course you can get your tanks.
Look at how sleek these tanks look.
They're just absolutely wonderful.
All the filtration will be in the back here,
so it's all hidden.
You've got this beautiful black glass in the back.
I mean it is so pro.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love you reptile people,
but wow.
They are light years ahead of us with things.
Look at this, how beautiful this is.
This is something that I would love in my office.
I mean, look at how many corals are in here.
Unbelievable.
I mean, this is a little piece of the ocean,
which is amazing.
There has been so much to check out, and speaking of out.
- [Narrator] Hope you guys enjoyed today's video,
if you did, there's a playlist that you can watch
all kinds of videos.
You can also hit that subscription button.
It would mean a lot to me.
Also, hit that like button while you're down there.
Have a wonderful day, reptile army.
Remember-
- [Speaker] Got a little buzz on now.
- [Speaker] Yeah, for sure.