Coral arrives in broken bag.

rickswika · 09-23-2003, 06:03 PM

My first corals (HURRAY!!!) arrived today... in a soaking wet and falling apart box. OUCH! This should have been a joyous occasion, but one of the bags had burst and leaked it contents. The mushroom coral inside was sitting in about an inch of cloudy water and not looking too happy. Three other corals and some fish came through without leaking.

I immediately called the vendor, per his instructions in the event of a problem. He recommended following the normal acclimation procedure anyway. The coral is guaranteed, so I obliged.

My question to the experts is, how should I proceed? How do I know if it is dead or sick? What if it is badly damaged? Will it foul up my tank?

I also received a beautiful purple tang in the same box. He is extremely lively, after being acclimated in QT. But, what worries me is, he has something white on the corner of his mouth. Like he got a fat lip. The box must have been tossed around a lot. Any advice would be appreciated.Thanks,Rick

Thanks,
Rick

ReefDave · 09-23-2003, 06:28 PM

Can you get us a pic?

I have some experience with shipping mushrooms and I know they are quiet tough. The one I recieved was not in a broken bag, but the water was completely brown, you couldn't see through it....and it smelled really bad. I followed the same instructions, acclimate as normal and keep a close eye. This thing was expelling its insides, and some of the white stringy material was coming out of its mouth. Within 48-72 hours the thing had recovered and was eating....

Just give it some time, it might suprise you. keep an eye on your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate, to make sure it isn't causing to much stress on your system.

Dave

JennM · 09-23-2003, 06:39 PM

Your stuff will probably be fine. The airlines can be brutal with shipments - I've had fish arrive almost dry in a leaking bag, and be fine, and corals dry in the bag that are fine - some are even shipped that way, damp with newspapers and no water to speak of.

Keep an eye on the purple, he could have a mechanical injury, so watch for secondary infection. If he's kept quiet and well fed he'll probably be just fine.

Welcome to the wonderous world of shipping livestock.

Jenn

hayday · 09-23-2003, 09:06 PM

this raises an interesting question: why are we so careful when acclimating a coral or fish to our tank when it is doubtful that such care is taken further up the line?

just as i am sure that some collectors are extremely careful in what they do, i'm equally sure that there are those who just don't care. do the lfs's take the time to properly acclimate? does it really matter if we just dump the coral into the tank considering that it has been plucked from the reef, crammed into a container, shipped halfway around the world and then put into a fish store tank? when one considers the abuse the poor thing has already endured, wouldn't it be best to simply get into the tank pronto?

think of it as a cross-country road trip: after 20 hours of non-stop driving, do you bother to neatly unpack your clothes or do you simply throw yourself, half-dressed, into bed? i don't know if i sleep better one way or the other, but i do insist on brushing my teeth before going to sleep.

-hayday

rickswika · 09-23-2003, 09:12 PM

It's a hairy muchroom coral. I only put the lights on long enought to snap this photo. You can see the distressed areas in the dead center of the photo and some of the guts leaking out.

ReefDave · 09-23-2003, 09:16 PM

hayday,
Hey fellow mid-missourian. I think the answer to this is a resounding no. I think it is important at we limit the ammount of stress on the animal as much as we can. Think about it this way....how many speicies die when they go from the reef to the collectors tank? It could be 5 it could be 5000 you just don't know. The unreputable collector might kill 100's for evern 1 that makes it. So that animal has already endured a ton of trauma, a little bit more could kill them.

The reputable collector has taken all of the proper acclimation steps to make sure that animals has the best chance of survival, in this, much more preferable case, you would want to do everything in your power to do the same.

So, although the specimen you purchase might have had terrible things done to it, that isn't an excuse to do it again.

HTH.

Dave

ReefDave · 09-23-2003, 09:17 PM

The "guts" might get "pulled back in" by the shroom eventually. Those actually have pretty good color, and I would expect them to make a full recovery.

Dave

Stang69 · 09-23-2003, 11:16 PM

Quote:

The airlines can be brutal with shipments

Yup Jenn they sure can. We were getting a shipment in from LA and it was full of sps. I was there when it was off loaded and it clearly said on the box " Do Not Drop" Uhhhhhhhhhhhh Guess what they were doing. I had a fit I called in the supervisor and had him watch the kid unload the wagon type load. To make a long story short he got a stern talkng to by his supervisor and also by me but im sure he is back at it again.

Your shrooms should be ok just watch them close

Jeff

JennM · 09-24-2003, 06:36 AM

I regularly get "Delta Frags".... but you can't control what happens once the boxes are checked in at the airlines. My LR was kept in the cooler once

, and the handler was very proud to mention this, despite all the boxes being marked "Live Marine Product, KEEP WARM"...

Acclimation is an interesting subject - I've seen people acclimate stuff right to death. Hours and hours in icky bag water....

It should be noted that there should be two different procedures for two different circumstances - a short ride home from the LFS should merit more time-consuming acclimation than a 30+ hour ride in an airplane. Once that long-term bag is opened, a quick series of chemical reactions begins, and leaving stuff in bag water too long can cause more stress than a fast move to a stable tank.

I drip stars and urchins, because of their sensitivity to changes in salinity and pH, but for minutes, not hours. Maybe 15 minutes. Everything else gets floated for temp, and then tanked. Corals get a Tech-D bath in transition water (bag water and new water) but fish go straight into tanks. I used to acclimate everything slowly and had more mortality that way. Now it's rare that I lose anything this way, and usually if a visual inspection of the fish before the bag is opened, causes me to be wary of that particular specimen, it's isolated for observation before it's placed with the general population. For me this works best.

Jenn

rickswika · 09-26-2003, 11:02 AM

Thanks for the info...the corals seem to be doing ok. The button and colony polyps are opened and feeding; the mushrooms are just sitting there regenerating I suppose. They look a little better, but are rather unimpressive at this point.

The purple tang's fat lip went away and he's feeding variously. He's got a little 1" blue tang that follows him around like a little brother. I've seen no signs of aggression towards the blue, even though the purple is at least twice his size. In fact, yesterday, the two of them cooperated in devouring an algae wafer.

At first, neither tang would eat. The blue would just rest with its tail up in the plastic weeds. I tried algae wafers, spirulina flakes, and even Julian Spring's seaweed...all were rejected. Strangely what got them eating was Mysis shrimp. I say strangely because they are Herbivores. I didn't think they would eat shrimp; boy was I wrong. As soon as I put the shrimp in the tank, the blue came out and started feeding for the first time. That was the turning point. Now they seem fine. What troopers

Coral arrives in broken bag.

Here's the pic.

Tangs are Feeding!