Your Coral Has Arrived — Start Here

Your box has arrived. Read this before you do anything else — it takes two minutes and it prevents almost every problem we see.

First: photograph the bag before you open it

If anything arrived dead, we need a clear, well-lit photo or video of it in the sealed, unopened bag, sent to jamie@theunderwatergardener.com with your order number within 4 hours of delivery.

Once the bag is opened there’s no way for us or UPS to establish what condition the animal arrived in, so this fifteen-second step is what protects you. Full terms on our Live Arrival Guarantee page.

Acclimation, step by step

Float the sealed bag in your tank or an acclimation container for 15–20 minutes to match temperature. Lights off or heavily dimmed.
Open the bag and drip acclimate for 30–45 minutes — roughly 2–3 drips per second — until the volume has about doubled. Corals do not need hours of this; long acclimations in unaerated shipping water do more harm than good.
Then follow the dipping guidance below — what you do next depends on whether you have a quarantine tank.
Place it low. Low light, low flow, on the sand bed or the bottom third of the tank.
Leave it alone for 7–14 days. Raise light and flow gradually over the following weeks.

Dipping — please read this part carefully

A coral coming out of an overnight box is at the most stressed point it will ever experience. A full-strength pest dip on top of that stress is often what makes a coral peel. This is where we see people lose animals that would otherwise have been fine.

If you have a quarantine tank — this is the best way

Don’t dip at all on arrival. Acclimate to temperature and put the coral straight into quarantine. Let it settle for a few days and recover from shipping first. Then dip it properly, at full strength, before it ever goes near your display.

This is how we do it here, and it is the method we recommend above all others.

If you don’t have a quarantine tank — most people don’t

Then we would rather you did a quick, gentle dip on arrival than put an undipped coral straight into your display. Keep it light:

API Melafix Marine — gentle enough for a freshly shipped coral
Two Little Fishies ReVive Coral Cleaner, mixed weaker than the label calls for and kept brief

Short and mild is the whole point. You are rinsing off hitchhikers, not running a full pest treatment on an animal that has just spent a night in a box. Rinse in clean saltwater afterwards, then place it low-light and low-flow and leave it be.

Our full guide to dipping corals →

Do not do these things

Never freshwater dip a coral. Freshwater dips are a fish treatment. On coral they cause immediate tissue damage and are usually fatal.
Don’t do a full-strength pest dip on arrival. See above — it is the most common way people lose a healthy shipped coral.
Don’t put it straight under full light. A coral coming out of a dark box will bleach under intense light. Start low and build up.
Don’t frag, cut or glue it down for at least two weeks. Let it recover first.
Don’t pour shipping water into your display. Ever.
Don’t panic and start chasing parameters. Stability beats correction every time in the first two weeks.

It hasn’t opened. Is it dying?

Almost certainly not. A torch that arrives closed, a scoly that stays deflated, an acro with its polyps in, zoas that stay shut for days — that is normal transit stress, not a dying animal. Some pieces take a week or more to look like themselves again.

Corals can also detach from the plug in transit. That is normal too — they get bounced around overnight. Just reattach it once the animal has settled.

New coral not opening after shipping: what’s normal and what isn’t →

If something looks wrong

Message us. Genuinely — we would far rather talk you through it than have you sit up at night worrying, or lose an animal you could have saved. Send a photo in white light and tell us what your parameters are.

jamie@theunderwatergardener.com · (305) 850-9949

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The Underwater Gardener · Aquacultured in Key West · FL Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072