And so, what we have in our wonderful cottage industry of coral farming aquarists is a tremendous resource for coral study and culture in display aquariums, basement culturing systems, backyard greenhouses and beyond. From the many different perspectives and positions of aquarists abroad, participants in coral culture have begun to explore the possibilities of improving husbandry and farming techniques to not only succeed in producing free-living divisions of coral, but to do it with great speed and efficiency. One of the most intriguing and effective methods of culturing coral is by suspension. Coral farmers have discovered that some corals respond superbly to culture in this manner and have demonstrated better growth than when grounded upon a substrate. If grown out and delivered whole, consumers get a product that may be oriented in any desired position. Any tissue that is forcibly stifled by settlement onto a substrate is really in the optimal position/environment to encrust/attach. Otherwise, the process of suspension culture may simply be a fast track to producing greater mass for a secondary technique imposed by the farmer. The strategy is not so unnatural as it might appear at first. Experienced aquarists and industry professionals have often noticed that at least several species of coral are imported naturally without solid base. That is to say, some corals have been collected in full circumference with healthy tissue, and without any apparent or conspicuous orientation. Most notably, Psammocora (Cat's Paw) and Siderastrea (Star/Starlet) species appear regularly in fully encrusted, spherical shapes as if they had been growing on a reef like scleractinian "tumbleweeds". Such animals are called coralliths as our good friend in the industry, Eric Borneman, has so kindly schooled me on (with a teaser that his adviser has a fascinating collection of such specimens including some surprising species!). Even as artifacts of a process in captivity (the growth in suspension) that may not be continued by the final consumer, the bottom line is that some species grow faster by this method of coral farming that serves a very useful purpose, if only as a prelude to secondary techniques like additional fragmentation.