Slick Coral Acclimation Guide

When expecting a live coral delivery please have everything on hand prior to receiving your package. Corals are very delicate animals and shipping causes them much stress. If they respond negatively to in-tank adjustments; envision the stress caused in a small volume of water during shipping.

Have an adequate sized sterile container (preferably clear) acrylic and shallow works best. Have freshly prepared saltwater. Be prepared with dump bucket, bone cutters, bandsaw, frag plugs, rock, or discs ready along with epoxy or glue if you intend on removing the coral from whatever we had it attached to. 

Unbox your coral and lay out at your work station. Take your sterile container and fill with saltwater from an "operating" donor aquarium (do not use freshly made saltwater). Fill container to a line where you are certain all the shipped corals will be submerged and not exposed to any air. Replace borrowed saltwater from donor tank essentially performing a mini water change. 

 

Corals are unlike fish and other invertebrates; the water you put them into is either within acceptable ranges and favorable chemistry or it is not. Acclimation is as simple and straight forward as possible.

Open shipped coral bags or containers and dump the shipping water into your dump bucket or discard later container while placing coral into the donor tank water container.

Inspect corals for any undesirable tissue damage, coralline, algae, and especially pests.  

TRANSPARENCY: We use a multitude of acceptable critters as part of our active cleanup crew. Our systems gladly welcome bristle worms, amphipods, copepods, astrea snails, feather dusters, tree worms, peanut worms, spaghetti worms, stomatella snails, limpet snails, cerith snails, and cowrie snails. 

We recommend quarantine and observation over any harsh day 1 coral dips. The best method is to quarantine and dip as needed over time. Our success rate dramatically increased by dipping corals at a later date as opposed to the day it is received.

We do not share water or equipment across our systems and do not move corals around from aquarium to aquarium as a measure of biosecurity. Our systems are independent of each other which creates a great advantage for intercepting potential coral pests and disease.

Suggested dip times on bottles are not species specific which becomes more harsh on the coral being dipped. We do not have any one single product that we use globally for treating corals of potential pests so please contact us directly for questions on best practices for species specific dips as well as pest specific removal techniques.

Lighting and flow acclimation. Well, placement and location is key. You likely will not over light corals you order from us and we use as much flow as each individual coral can withstand. Most corals solely thrive from random waving waterflow.