anathema
Guest
I ordered a coral online this week, it arrived today in very poor to maybe dead condition. I've been searching online for ideas for how to handle this coral, since I haven't ever bought online before this year I don't have much experience dealing with poorly shipped corals. I'm also not having much luck finding good threads addressing the issue on this or other forums. Since we have a huge wealth of experience here maybe we can make one. It's looking unlikely that I'll save this one, but I thought it might help to have a how-to thread for this situation.
First, what I did:
I received the coral from fed-ex in the early afternoon, and the first thing that struck me was that they shipped me a single coral in a HUGE full sized shipping box. Immediately upon opening the box, and moving aside the heat packs that were on the very top, I could see from the murky water that things weren't perfect. The heat packs were still warm, but since they were in the top of the box I doubt they had much affect on the huge internal volume of the box. I cut open the bag and drained it into my acclimation container, while noticing the water was extremely cold. I examined the coral, which in this case was a red fungia, and saw that it had bleached almost completely. Little specks of color remained in a few places, and I could see that the tissue appeared to still be intact. I could discern the mouth and tentacles clearly, even though the coral was tightly conforming to the skeleton. At this point, I called the company that had shipped it and informed them of the situation. They instructed me to acclimate the coral and call them the next day to apprise them of it's progress.
I drip acclimated the coral over the next 20 mins, with the container it was in floating on the surface of the tank water to maintain the temperature. I then placed it in the tank, under full lighting and normal tank conditions and took a picture. At no point in the acclimation process did I see any tissue movement on the coral's part. It's mouth is partially open, and it's tissue and tentacles are all tightly deflated. 4 hours later it remains in this same posture, but is shedding what appears to be mucous. When it came out of the bag, it smelled slightly "fishy" but not rotten, and some of the particles floating in the bag were mysis shrimp coral food pieces, so I would attribute the fishy smell to it's being fed before it was shipped out and expelling it's stomach contents when it bleached. I'm fairly certain the coral is dead at this point, but because of the cold water it has not begun to rot. Tomorrow morning should give me a better idea, though interestingly, none of the detrivore snails I have investigated it, and they are usually quick to notice anything dead.
I am going to attempt to feed it tonight, though if the mouth has not closed by then I doubt that will succeed. I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on what I should have done differently, and what I can do now. I'm specifically curious about the following:
1: Would it be better to place this in a shaded location, with mild flow, or leave it in a medium flow, high light spot.
2: In order to get a refund, the shipper will ask for me to ship the skeleton back. has anyone seen cold shocked fungia bud off from the dead skeleton? Should I try to argue to keep it or is it completely dead under these circumstances? I'm out the shipping cost either way, and at this point do not plan on ordering from this company again because I feel their packaging was sloppy and caused the loss.
3: Should I have acclimated it carefully, like I did, or should I have dumped it in clean, warm water immediately in order to minimize it's exposure to cold dirty shipping water?
4: Is there anything I haven't done that I should have?
Any input is appreciated, except that I do not plan on saying who the shipper was so please don't ask.
First, what I did:
I received the coral from fed-ex in the early afternoon, and the first thing that struck me was that they shipped me a single coral in a HUGE full sized shipping box. Immediately upon opening the box, and moving aside the heat packs that were on the very top, I could see from the murky water that things weren't perfect. The heat packs were still warm, but since they were in the top of the box I doubt they had much affect on the huge internal volume of the box. I cut open the bag and drained it into my acclimation container, while noticing the water was extremely cold. I examined the coral, which in this case was a red fungia, and saw that it had bleached almost completely. Little specks of color remained in a few places, and I could see that the tissue appeared to still be intact. I could discern the mouth and tentacles clearly, even though the coral was tightly conforming to the skeleton. At this point, I called the company that had shipped it and informed them of the situation. They instructed me to acclimate the coral and call them the next day to apprise them of it's progress.
I drip acclimated the coral over the next 20 mins, with the container it was in floating on the surface of the tank water to maintain the temperature. I then placed it in the tank, under full lighting and normal tank conditions and took a picture. At no point in the acclimation process did I see any tissue movement on the coral's part. It's mouth is partially open, and it's tissue and tentacles are all tightly deflated. 4 hours later it remains in this same posture, but is shedding what appears to be mucous. When it came out of the bag, it smelled slightly "fishy" but not rotten, and some of the particles floating in the bag were mysis shrimp coral food pieces, so I would attribute the fishy smell to it's being fed before it was shipped out and expelling it's stomach contents when it bleached. I'm fairly certain the coral is dead at this point, but because of the cold water it has not begun to rot. Tomorrow morning should give me a better idea, though interestingly, none of the detrivore snails I have investigated it, and they are usually quick to notice anything dead.
I am going to attempt to feed it tonight, though if the mouth has not closed by then I doubt that will succeed. I'd love to hear anyone's opinions on what I should have done differently, and what I can do now. I'm specifically curious about the following:
1: Would it be better to place this in a shaded location, with mild flow, or leave it in a medium flow, high light spot.
2: In order to get a refund, the shipper will ask for me to ship the skeleton back. has anyone seen cold shocked fungia bud off from the dead skeleton? Should I try to argue to keep it or is it completely dead under these circumstances? I'm out the shipping cost either way, and at this point do not plan on ordering from this company again because I feel their packaging was sloppy and caused the loss.
3: Should I have acclimated it carefully, like I did, or should I have dumped it in clean, warm water immediately in order to minimize it's exposure to cold dirty shipping water?
4: Is there anything I haven't done that I should have?
Any input is appreciated, except that I do not plan on saying who the shipper was so please don't ask.
) That looked like a beauty though. Looking at that pic you sure like those plate corals.
