This is one of the major things differing from your local fish store and an aquaculture. The local fish store likely just got your coral in last Thursday, “yesterday”, in time for the Friday night rush. Yes the coral is open and looks nice now, but its only been here for one morning and is probably happy because the fish shop is cleaner than the wholesaler that it came into last week which in turn, was cleaner than the importers collection facility, where the coral was brought after being collected in the wild last month. You see the trend here, Our coral is only shipped one time, when we pack it gently, and send it off to you. This maximizes the chance that your coral will acclimate well to your tank, and ensures that its at it absolute best.
When you buy coral from a local fish store, (unless your very lucky, and have a great shop that dips, quarantines coral for a month to let it recover), your taking one big risk. Well why take that risk. Let me describe this a different way. Today you went to the local dog store and buy a puppy. You get it home and its great. All the other animals like it and play well. It seems to be opening up to the new environment and then Oop’s! You wake up day two to find that poor little scrappy at some point last night has decided to slime out and now there is a skeleton of a puppy and a pile of goo in the bottom of the pen! (insert wife screaming children crying yea its one of those days) now you do catch a break, you call the dog store and they say oh we are sorry. Can we give you a discount toward another one of our puppy’s! But the point is that will never happen if you bought a dog and it melted over night some one would be in jail!!! why are coral any different just because they don’t catch or run around and pee on the rug dose not make them any less alive but yet its perfectly acceptable to kill all you like in fact there is a 2.2 billion dollar a year business built around it. This is nuts our corals are raised in carefully maintained facility’s ensuring that the only acclimation is the one to your tank “3 less than from the LFS if your counting”. So now that we know the why lets look at the how.
After all, how do you ship one of these delicate little guys? Starting with selection: when you place a order for a particular type of coral we begin the selection process. We look and see of the frags we have of that strain what ones look the most full and healthy other factors, including how long ago this coral was fragged, and has it healed and is it healthy and disease free.
Once the coral has been selected to ship, we begin boxing them. We take every precaution to ensure your coral arrives alive, healthy, and ready to add to your tank. This begins with proper bagging. BigDogReefs uses industrial Ten millimeter Ziploc bags. All corals are shipped with zero air ensuring whatever way the box is stored for shipping “Accidents Happen” your coral is always submerged and safe.
We would like to show you a step by step example of a typical coral being shipped,(No live Coral Was Harmed in the shooting of these photos). In the first photo we can see your frag snuggled into its first bag. We use the Ziploc style bags over rubber bands or crimped bands for a few reasons. Most rubber bands break and mechanically crimped bands if done improperly can tear or damaged a bag, resulting in a slow leek that can leave a coral high and dry.
The larger bag is the inner box liner this bag holds up to 8 frags securely in such a way that even if a frags zipper were to release that the bag would not spill fluids exposing or harming the coral.
Next the frag is placed in the inner box liner and placed in a cooler lined with newspaper and either a cool or warm pack or two, depending on the weather forecast for the destination and travel route. All coral is shipped next day express (UPS, USPS or FedEx at your preference) to minimize the stresses involved with shipping.
Here we go ready for a hot or cold pack then sealed up almost ready to go in the outer box. There are just a step or two more to make sure this little nugget is good to go.
Once the box is sealed.
We then come to the last and most important step to sending you a great new addition to your reef aquarium. We take the sealed cooler and place it in a very snug Ziploc bag (All Ziploc bags are Ten Millimeter Industrial Grade bags for comparison a standard kitchen bag is 5 mill). Then most of the air is removed. The reason for this is so we can create whats called a “Dead Air Space”. Don’t freak out its a good thing. Believe me we didn’t go thru all this just to kill it now. This makes a space in between the inner and outer bag with no air circulation. This stagnant air is called ”Dead Air Space”. Your house is build in the same way with a inner wall, a space for insulation and a outer wall. This Air holds a buffer between the inner bag and the outside air temperature, and because fresh air isn’t being exposed directly into this space, the temperature is much more stable.
Then we seal up the box with a bumper stick safe and sound. Please use responsibly. Not on the back of your ex bosses black truck. Not on any park bench’s and especially never, ever, ever, place a BigDogReef sticker on the glass door of your local fish store. Then they’ll see our policy’s and prices and cry. Not cool.
Here it is the finished box in all its spender with genuine hand written in a mildly artistic mostly impaired “This Side Up and Live Coral”. So if you see this on your doorstep don’t panic just float “Relax” Float more and enjoy. Always remember if you ever ask yourself ” Should I drip acclimate or not?” There is no question. Drip. Reef Aquariums are fickle things. They like subtle changes, and the only thing you can ever rush in this hobby is a empty tank and wallet. These things just take time. So take time.
So order a frag! Get wet and don’t be a spazz! Most of all happy reefkeeping.