Adding corals to my tank for the 1st time.

[mfs1855]

Hi,

I'm going to the frag swap tomorrow and it occurred to me that there is probably more to aclimatizing corals to my tank than simply waiting for the temp in the bag to equalize with the temp in my tank.

I have a frag rack where I can keep the frags in the tank, or in another tank for a while. But any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Btw. My phosphates, nitrates and nitrites are 0, I have a 60 gallon cube, keep the water at 76f, salinity at .025 and have one coral that's been in the tank healthy for about 2 months now.

Thanks,

Matt

 

[brooklynfc]

best advise it to dip before you add them so you dont get something in your tank that will kill them

 

[mfs1855]

Dip? You mean something like lugo's?

 

[brooklynfc]

yup exactly

 

[mfs1855]

Thanks. I happen to have some here. The package seems to indicate you should be very careful with it. Any idea how much I should use?

Thanks for the advice!

 

[brooklynfc]

i use coral rx and just add about 5 drops to some tank water in a small container let coral sit for 5 min swirl coral around a little in the water then rinse coralbwith fresh tankwater in another container and add coral to sand bed for about a week

 

[ReefWreak]

Thread is probably dead, but I can't bear to have it close without someone recommending drip acclimating your corals before introducing them to the main tank.

My procedure:
Float bags to equalize temperature
Set up bags hanging from tank stand in plastic container
Put all corals from one source together in a single bag and drain the water until it's just above the corals
Drip 1 drop per second into the coral bag until volume doubles
Turn tank lights off
Dip corals as necessary, depending on coral type
Rinse corals in small container of tank water
Add to new tank, out of direct intense light (unless you know explicitly that it's coming from lights as intense or more intense than yours)

Then you can raise them up in the tank as they adjust to your lighting.
On, and complicated, but I think I can count the number of frags I've lost on one hand over many years.

 

[brooklynfc]

i have drip acclimated corals and didnt find any benefit. i
i just temp acclimate dip and just put it in the tank. never lost a coral doing it that way

 

[rookie07]

I temp acclimate by floating bag. Then I add "Revive" (coral cleaner) to the bag (I have removed the bag from the tank at this point). Then after 3-5 minutes in "Revive" i take coral out, shake it well enough to get rid of most of revive and then add to tank in a low light low flow place.

 

[mfs1855]

After several weeks I can say that Brooklynfsc's suggestion of bringing to temp and Coral Rx seems to have worked on 12 of 12 frags.