Move over beef cattle.
Coral may just be taking over your place as the cash crop of the Cariboo - at least in a little corner of it near Horse Lake where Joey Courchesne and his business partner Ian Hof have constructed a green house for the sole purpose of growing live hobbyists' aquarium coral.
It's not an easy project, and progressing to their present point didn't come without a lot of backbreaking and wallet-busting work.
While live coral is a billion-dollar industry in North America, Courchesne believes he and Hof are currently the only growers in Canada. He says the market is huge, extremely lucrative and insatiable, and he and Hof have the perfect blend of background, education and experience to make it work.
Courchesne gained a lot of his know-how, working for several years as a research technician at University of British Columbia, breeding fish for genetic studies. The partners also managed one of the largest tropical fish warehouses in Canada. That's where they met, and where the idea to start a business developed.
"I refer to ourselves as the only idiots in Canada who would try this."
While the corals they grow, naturally come from the warm waters of Australia, Indonesia, Fiji and Kenya, the pair have developed an efficient system that nearly mimics those same conditions. It runs chiefly on solar and geothermal heating and cooling, using the almost perfectly balanced well water that comes from the ground at Horse Lake.
Lessons learned through previous mistakes are also powerful tools.
Some of the earliest mistakes were made in 2009 when they built their first greenhouse in Langley, on a relative's property. The quality of the well water there was not ideal for keeping coral alive and required a reverse osmosis system and the addition of copious amounts of calcium. When the relative decided to sell his property, it was time to move on, as they couldn't afford the land for their greenhouse.
They ended up at Horse Lake due to the near perfect water quality and to Courchesne's familiarity with the area. He had been visiting the family cabin on Green Lake since he was three and felt comfortable in the Cariboo.
Construction of the 700-square-foot (65-square-metre) greenhouse was begun in June 2010, using several rows of rubber vehicle tires for the lower section of the walls. The insulation factor was good, but the work involved was far more difficult than either of the partners had imagined.
"It was back-breaking labour and I'll remember the day we finished the tire wall, for the rest of my life."
The greenhouse is situated to make optimum use of sunlight, with a section of the roof shaded to accommodate certain corals that require less light.
Optimum temperatures for keeping coral alive are between 23 and 26.6 C, so regulating the greenhouse climate is a full-time job.
Geothermal heating and cooling come from a 120-foot (36.5-metre) length of pipe that they laid in a hand-dug trench, 15 feet (4.5 metres) below the surface of the ground. When outside temperatures hit -30 C last winter, the system kept the inside at a steady -5 C. A wood stove provides the majority of heat during the winter and an industrial chiller helps to cool water in the growing tanks during the warmer months.
Shallow raceway style tanks run along the perimeter and through the centre of the greenhouse, and with a pump system, keep 1,800 gallons (8,183 litres) of water circulating through them.
Courchesne says he couldn't be happier about his Cariboo well water, which naturally contains the right amount of calcium necessary for maintaining healthy coral. All he needs to do is add salt.
Through connections from the fish warehouse business, finding seed stock coral is relatively easy. Still, rather than start fresh when the Cariboo greenhouse was functional, Courchesne brought some of their valuable stock from Langley with him when he moved here and set it up in temporary tanks in the garage.
It turned out to be a costly mistake because when he and his brother left for four hours to go fishing one day, the tank's water pump seized, heated the water and cooked the coral. It was a huge letdown for Courchesne.
"I knew better than to set something up temporarily. I had a lot of premium pieces there, ready to sell."
His first order of corals for the new growing system came this past April, and is thriving in the greenhouse and in a small tank in his house. Inside, it survives with artificial lighting and the technology, says Courchesne, was developed through the marijuana grow-op industry.
"When the equipment developed to a certain stage, you realized you could keep coral alive."
While coral orders are made by the ton, Courchesne only keeps a fraction of it, keeping the best and giving the rest away. His tanks have the capacity to hold up to 20,000 pieces, which with some varieties, can double in size in as little as four days. Courchesne divides them on a regular basis, selling the harvested pieces for a hefty profit.
While prices of live coral have a wide range, a rare blue coral can sell for $180 for a piece the size of a large marble. Others sell for $1 apiece, but his low and no-cost energy sources make it economical to grow, and the demand is endless.
"I know I can sell everything that I produce. There are clients begging for it."
Courchesne says that for some aquarium owners, keeping live coral has the same appeal as gardening. He notes there are online competitions out there for the best tank of the month and that Vancouver has three shops dedicated to selling live coral.
The appeal, he says, is in the brilliant colours that are the trademark of living coral. Most of it, he says, is harvested in tightly regulated licensed management areas of the ocean, which keeps it sustainable.
The Cariboo may not be in the tropics, but Courchesne says that he has confidence in the potential for his unique business to work in this climate.
"I'm 100 per cent sure. I just have to make it work."
