I bought some coral frags at a pet store today. I am trying to introduce them slow to my 37 gal s/w .....do I just anchor the plugs to live rock? should I remove them from plugs? how long should I acclimate them to the new lighting? thanx for any help.......
introducing new corals
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Far as the plugs its up to you.I just leave them on because its faster to ad them to the tank and i don't to glue them down...Now far as the acclimate time i do it for all my coral, I float them for about half hour,Then i drip them for one to two hours depends on what kind of coral it is..Now for the light part i will put all the coral at the bottom and then one week later move it to the mid. then a week later i put them where i want..Now that's just the way i do it..Always read more about it...Hope this helps
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I hope you are treating for pests before introducing them to your display tank. Take a look at Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure or other similar products. Its easy, does not take much time and could possibly save you from things like flatworms, red bugs or acro eating nudibranchs. Trust me you don't want any of those. You will also want to look for things like aiptasia, mojano anemones, bubble algae, bryopsis and may othe rthings common in LFS systems.
At least treat the corals and it would be better to QT them until you know they are safe.
At least treat the corals and it would be better to QT them until you know they are safe.
I have a 210 gal reef tank and I've always flooted the bag on top for 15 or 20 minutes and then added the coral right in. Never a problem. Now my corals are of the soft variety because I like the fact that they move and I don't use halides just T5's ( 8x54W 47") & (8x23W 23") actually I do have a few sps corals but they do nothing for me personally.
Frags are tricky as pateince is needed as they take a while to grow (again this is because I don't have halides) I've seen some frag rocks on the net and they look like a good way. The big problem with frags is the snails knocking them over. I've seen stores that put frags in eggcrate. You can build an eggcrate holder and put it up high in the tank. I've tried drilling into live rock with 1/2 inch holes using a masonary bit but that's got to be done on a thin piece of rock. Not more than an inch if that. Now I'll admit my drill is an ancient one at that so you might do better with a good solid drill. Hey Good Luck!
Frags are tricky as pateince is needed as they take a while to grow (again this is because I don't have halides) I've seen some frag rocks on the net and they look like a good way. The big problem with frags is the snails knocking them over. I've seen stores that put frags in eggcrate. You can build an eggcrate holder and put it up high in the tank. I've tried drilling into live rock with 1/2 inch holes using a masonary bit but that's got to be done on a thin piece of rock. Not more than an inch if that. Now I'll admit my drill is an ancient one at that so you might do better with a good solid drill. Hey Good Luck!
reefcrazy and AZDesertRat both have very good sound advice. If you take some tome and throughly acclimate your live stock you will likely find that they start out a lot better in your tank and start opening up faster. Of course I have seen a number of reefers just pluck them outta the bag and throw them in. Just because they get away with doing that doesnt make it a sound practice to get in the habit of doing.
Got to second that coral treatment and QT if at all possible. I keep a 5 gallon tank available just for that purpose. You will only have to get burned once to become a believer in QT tanks! Yes its a pain and we all want to hurry up and see our new additions in our main displays, but look at it this way...How much money do you got invested in your display? Are you willing to risk it all?
Depends on the plug the coral is mounted to. If its the little plugs like ORA uses, I will drill my rock and glue the plug into the rock. If its a plug from GARF, I will usually break most of the plug away and remount the coral. In the end it doesnt matter what route you take.
Got to second that coral treatment and QT if at all possible. I keep a 5 gallon tank available just for that purpose. You will only have to get burned once to become a believer in QT tanks! Yes its a pain and we all want to hurry up and see our new additions in our main displays, but look at it this way...How much money do you got invested in your display? Are you willing to risk it all?
Depends on the plug the coral is mounted to. If its the little plugs like ORA uses, I will drill my rock and glue the plug into the rock. If its a plug from GARF, I will usually break most of the plug away and remount the coral. In the end it doesnt matter what route you take.
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I deal with this on a very regular basis.
Personally, I dip all my corals. I use Interceptor (yes, the kind for dogs), Fluke tabs (the kind you get at your pet store for fish medicine), and occasionally Iodine (the aforementioned Lugol's solution), and occasionally Potassium Permanganate (if its a Montipora sp.).
I usually remount the branching type corals onto acrylic rods and insert the rods into holes I drilled in all of my rocks with a 1/2 Bosch masonry bit. This method is called "pegging".
Sometimes, if its an encrusting type, I will cut away the base of the plug, make it more of a disk, and glue that to a larger flat stone to get a bigger piece to work with later, to experiment with positioning (to determine the coral's lighting and flow preferences, plus start it low if unsure) before committing to a particular larger rock to glue it to. But you can do the same and just glue that disk to your rockwork if you have a permanent spot where you know you will want it forever, and want it to start encrusting everywhere from. You can do this with superglue and/or 2 part epoxy. With superglue (the kind for corals, a gel-type such as IC-Gel or any of the commercial kinds marketed as for fragging) you squeeze out a half-marble size onto the bottom of the plug, dip that into the tank water to make it skin over, and then roll up your sleeve and put it right down into the tank and slam it down on the spot where you want it to stay. Mold the glue with your fingers and believe it or not you can shape it and work with it a bit before it sets. If you want to build a ramp for the encrusting to occur easier and basically make a ramp to train the coral to grow better outwards vs. down into some shadow, you can use 2-part epoxy, mix up a small shooter-marble size into a ball, then make it into a snake with your palms, then put that into the tank and go around the base of the disk you glued down and mold that as an intermediate "step" for the coral to grow onto on its way down to the rock. This is good to do because the corals may come to more of a halt when growing when they grow into a shadow (where the side of the disk goes straight down). So this can speed things up for you and the final look is certainly more natural as well.
As stated above, to reiterate, if unsure, start low and bring the coral up towards the light. It's easier to give it more light than to make it recover from being burned. Also, your lights will matter as to decide where to position on day 1 in your tank, also try to determine the light of the tank it came from. To go from 20K lights at the bottom of a tank to 10K lights at the top would easily fry your delicate frag.
Hope the info helps and if you have any questions, ask away, more than happy to help.
Personally, I dip all my corals. I use Interceptor (yes, the kind for dogs), Fluke tabs (the kind you get at your pet store for fish medicine), and occasionally Iodine (the aforementioned Lugol's solution), and occasionally Potassium Permanganate (if its a Montipora sp.).
I usually remount the branching type corals onto acrylic rods and insert the rods into holes I drilled in all of my rocks with a 1/2 Bosch masonry bit. This method is called "pegging".
Sometimes, if its an encrusting type, I will cut away the base of the plug, make it more of a disk, and glue that to a larger flat stone to get a bigger piece to work with later, to experiment with positioning (to determine the coral's lighting and flow preferences, plus start it low if unsure) before committing to a particular larger rock to glue it to. But you can do the same and just glue that disk to your rockwork if you have a permanent spot where you know you will want it forever, and want it to start encrusting everywhere from. You can do this with superglue and/or 2 part epoxy. With superglue (the kind for corals, a gel-type such as IC-Gel or any of the commercial kinds marketed as for fragging) you squeeze out a half-marble size onto the bottom of the plug, dip that into the tank water to make it skin over, and then roll up your sleeve and put it right down into the tank and slam it down on the spot where you want it to stay. Mold the glue with your fingers and believe it or not you can shape it and work with it a bit before it sets. If you want to build a ramp for the encrusting to occur easier and basically make a ramp to train the coral to grow better outwards vs. down into some shadow, you can use 2-part epoxy, mix up a small shooter-marble size into a ball, then make it into a snake with your palms, then put that into the tank and go around the base of the disk you glued down and mold that as an intermediate "step" for the coral to grow onto on its way down to the rock. This is good to do because the corals may come to more of a halt when growing when they grow into a shadow (where the side of the disk goes straight down). So this can speed things up for you and the final look is certainly more natural as well.
As stated above, to reiterate, if unsure, start low and bring the coral up towards the light. It's easier to give it more light than to make it recover from being burned. Also, your lights will matter as to decide where to position on day 1 in your tank, also try to determine the light of the tank it came from. To go from 20K lights at the bottom of a tank to 10K lights at the top would easily fry your delicate frag.
Hope the info helps and if you have any questions, ask away, more than happy to help.
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*w2 Well I was going to add my .02 but seems like everyone has got this matter covered except we need to see some pictures.
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