Repopulating the Shallow Reef

Ralij

With the theme of conservation in mind (and no small amount of guilt at destroying a number of coral communities to make way for my base) there should be a way to create reefs. There are the external beds, but you can't put in the ambient grass species, the table coral, the shelf coral (or whatever the common coral samples come from), the algae that seems to form the base of the coral communities, that heavily ridged coral that seems to grow under a number of coral communities and possibly a few others. We know how much damage coral destruction can cause in our own world so a way to mitigate that damage would be nice, especially since you need so many coral samples for crafting.

So my idea to solve this is to make craftable reef balls.
http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/full-width/images/print-edition/20141206_TQP005_0.jpg

Over time and with a couple of stages they could produce an assortment of new corals for the environment (or for crafting so you dont have to massacre the reef any more). Perhaps the first stage the coralline algae grows over it, the second stage has polyps, and the third stage is fully grown corals.

Perhaps as a bonus there could be other small creatures inside it that might be usable like shrimp, anenomies and clownfish (if the world has a parallel anyway) and maybe find a Garyfish hiding in it or a Boomarang having lunch on the corals.

Another two cents. Cheers.

Rezca

I was just thinking about this too while playing earlier; we can repopulate most fauna - passive and aggressive - and can cultivate our own kelp, mushrooms, etc to avoid overharvesting the naturally growing ones.... But we have limited Coral to work with and no way to cultivate more.

Having a way to re-grow it or grow our own would be splendid.

Sub_Naughty

Definately adding this to my post, look at you eco friendly people go (probably after destroying all your own coral reserves) haha . Any more ideas please comment them on my post here http://goo.gl/jqx9a2