Dallas frag from Matt. My fave SPS coral so I’m hoping this little guy is gonna grow!
One of the near dead SPS corals from the interstate shipment. You can see the completely bleached base. The only way to save it from here is to ‘frag’ it. Fragging is where you snip off the tips that are still good.
One of two big pink birds nest corals in the interstate shipment. It’s beaten up and some parts look pretty pale but I think they’ll both pull through AOK.
Another one from interstate. Blue tips but the rest of it is brown. A brown acro is an unhappy acro.
Tank hit 29degrees lasst week so I’ve been running this fan and so far the temp has stayed below 28.
Full Tanks Shot.
I took delivery of a few more corals this week both from a local buyer (Matt from AMDbulbs who delivered the corals for me) and also from my Uncle John’s interstate collector.
I tried my hand at SPS corals a few years ago and only managed to keep them alive for a few weeks and I never tried keeping them again. They’re harder to keep than most other corals which explains why they’re considered the jewels of the reef (also generally commanding higher prices and much more aquarium gear and husbandry to keep). With my current system I’ve been able to not only keep them but to watch them grow so I put an order in with my Uncle John for a box of SPS corals sight unseen (kinda exciting as you don’t know what you’re going to get).
Unfortunately it all went wrong.
The plane was delayed overnight and something also went wrong at the airport. Instead of the box coming in first thing in the morning it was delayed until late that afternoon. On opening the box there was a pretty bad smell. Two bags were filled with black (rotten) water and inside them were completely bleached acros. In other bags were more bleached acros, dead crabs and even a dead little green goby which must have been living in the coral (so sad!). I paid $270 for a box of 8 large colonies, 2 were completely gone, another is pretty much gone (I’ve fragged it but it’s not looking promising) and the others look pretty bashed up. :(
It’s the last time I’ll be ordering a box of acros unseen. I thought I was going to get a lot for very little money but instead I got a lot of death. I feel guilty about it and I would have been better off buying quality live stock from someone close by.