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Acclimation Guide

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The first hour decides more than the next month. Read this once before the box arrives, and put the supplies on the counter the night before: a small container, a length of airline tubing, a turkey baster, a dip cup, and a clean towel.

Step 1. Photograph first, always

Before anything else, photograph the unopened box and then each animal inside its sealed bag. It takes ninety seconds and it is the only proof that exists if something arrived dead. Once a bag is open, the live arrival guarantee cannot be applied to that animal.

Step 2. Kill the lights

Turn your display lights off, or down to the lowest blue setting. The animal has been in a dark box for eighteen hours and full light on arrival is a real shock. Leave the lights low for the rest of the day and return to your normal schedule tomorrow.

Step 3. Temperature, then chemistry

Float the sealed bags in the display for 15 to 20 minutes. That is enough to close the temperature gap and no longer: the water in the bag has been accumulating ammonia the whole trip and time is not your friend.

Step 4. Drip

  1. Open the bags and pour the animals with their water into a clean container, never into the tank.
  2. Start a siphon with airline tubing from the display into the container and tie a loose knot in the line to slow it down.
  3. Target 2 to 3 drips per second for 30 to 45 minutes, until the container holds roughly three times the water it started with.
  4. Discard all of that water. Shipping water never goes into the display.

A coral dip is cheap insurance against flatworms, nudibranchs and red bugs riding in on a plug. Use a commercial iodine based coral dip at the dosage on the bottle, in tank water, for 5 to 10 minutes with gentle circulation from a baster. Rinse the frag in a second cup of clean tank water before it goes in. Do not dip anemones or fish, and go light on a chalice or an already stressed piece.

Step 6. Placement for the first week

  • Put every new coral on the sand bed or the lowest shelf for the first week, whatever its final home will be, with gentle flow.
  • Move it up a few inches every few days until it reaches the light level it wants. A coral that goes straight to the top of a strong tank bleaches, and bleached tissue rarely comes back.
  • Leave six inches between a new coral and any euphyllia, chalice or favia already in the tank. Sweeper tentacles come out at night.
  • Anemones go on the sand near a rock and choose their own spot. Cover every pump intake before one enters the tank.

What is normal in the first week

Closed polyps, a deflated mushroom, a torch that will not extend, a leather that sheds a waxy film. All of that is normal. A coral that is still closed after seven days is telling you something about flow, light or a neighbor. Look at those three before you touch a test kit.

Quarantine

If you can run a small separate tank, hold new corals for two to four weeks under modest light and inspect the plugs weekly with a flashlight after lights out. Most pest outbreaks in an established reef trace back to a plug that skipped this step.