Unpacking Happiness

Coral shipments may be the best thing in my life. See, I laughed after typing that and went to backspace it... then realized I couldn't. I really do love getting new shipments of coral in. I'm this impulsive coral buying fiend. If corals were shoes, I'd be my sister.

Corals! (don't worry ladies, my number is at the bottom) (inserts from liveaquaria.com)

Where it all comes from!

So a lot of people are amazed about how awesome my tank looks, especially the customers at the bakery. One day, after battling my way to the front of the enamored masses staring longingly at my aquarium, I was confronted by a lovely lady. (We'll probably get married, once I find out her name.) After tearing her eyes away from the aquarium for just a brief moment, she looked up at me and asked "But where does it all come from?" I'll save you a lot of reading: the internet. The answer is that most of what's in my fish tank comes from the internet.

Here's what I got when I googled "the internet". (deviantart.net)

I only order from one website, LiveAquaria. They have a seemingly endless supply of the best fish and corals from around the globe. More importantly, the quality of their fish and coral is really unmatched. The last thing you want is some company shipping you fish that aren't exceptionally healthy.

Where all of my money ends up.

Coral Day!

Coral Day, the best day of the week, is not a routine thing. It only occurs after I've found money or after I've had just enough to drink so that I'm coherent enough to navigate the internet but not focused enough to say no. Regardless, it's a glorious day. The corals and fish ship next-day air, as fish hate airports and traveling in general.

I BET THERE'S CORAL IN THERE!

 I guess I could have put something in the picture for scale, but I think you get the idea. This box contains three small bags with polyps and a big bag with a bubble coral inside.

Barely contained excitement.

 I usually just use a razor blade to open up the cardboard box. On the inside is a styrofoam box. If you've ever used one of those small styrofoam ice chests, it's essentially the same thing.

The cozy coral chest.

 Since it's kind of a pain to get the ice chest out of the cardboard, generally I cut down along the corners of the box and slide the ice chest out.

Surgically precise box extraction.

 The lid is just taped down with some clear shipping tape, so all you have to do is rip it off. Depending on how excited you are for Coral Day (super excited) generally dictates how you handle this step. At the top of the box are these little water activated packets that control the temperature inside the ice chest.

Heat packets (like the ones in MREs).

 Like I said, these are water-activated heating packets that keep the ice chest at around 75- 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Styrofoam is a great insulator, so whatever temperature you have inside the ice chest, it will stay that temperature. It doesn't necessarily have to be used for cold things. Styrofoam just prevents the temperature outside the box from affecting the temperature inside the box.

The peak of comfort.

 The corals are placed inside of 4 bags each. These bags are filled with pure oxygen and then clamped shut with metal clips. Then they stuff the bags inside of the ice chest and fill it with packing peanuts (look up).

Do not place in vacuum shoot.

 The corals are shipped in 4 bags each. In the picture above, you can see the metal clip holding the bag shut. You'll also notice there are two black shields, one at the top and one at the bottom of each bag. These help block out light. It's less stressful to the corals and fish if the light intensity isn't changing sporadically. To remedy this, they try and keep all light out when they package them for shipment.

"LOL HE LEFT THEM IN THE BAGS!!!"

 The next step only really has an impact on fish and invertebrates, but for the sake of this post I decided to show you anyway. I place the bags in my sump (the tank located underneath the main aquarium, used to house the filtration system) for about 15 minutes to let the corals and fish adjust to the temperature of the aquarium.

The first of many layers.

 After about 15 minutes I cut open the bags to start acclimating the corals to the same salinity and nutrient levels that my aquarium has. The picture above is after cutting off the first metal clip top-knot thing you saw earlier.

So close.

 The final two bags are upside-down and sealed again with a metal clip. The idea with the excessive bagging is to prevent the corals from puncturing the bags and leaking all over the ice chest. This would not only make a mess, but also it would leave the corals without water. If you've been following along so far then you know that would be a bad thing.

It's like a sleeping mask! For fish!

 This is a picture of what the black covers look like up close. So now that you've seen the layering of the bags, I can try and explain in a little better detail how they're wrapped. So the first bag containing the coral has a black cover placed over the bottom of it, then it's placed inside of another bag. The first bag is then filled with pure oxygen and the two bags are sealed with a metal clip. Then this mated bag contraption is flipped upside down and inserted into another bag. This third bag then has a black cover placed over the bottom of it as well. Once that's done, the entire thing is put into yet another bag (bringing the bag total to 4) and sealed yet again with a metal clip.

The only thing holding back hot steamy bag romance.

 After I cut the metal clips off and break up the bag orgy, I start adding water from my aquarium to the bags. This allows the corals to get used to the specific water qualities that my aquarium water has.

Never accept a drink from me.

 I'll add about one cup of water to the bags every 30 minutes or so depending on the hardiness of whatever it is I'm trying to acclimate. Corals don't generally require an acclimation like this, you could just put them straight into the tank. Regardless, it never hurts to slowly acclimate them to your aquarium water.

Side view of the coral frag on a plug.

 The picture up above is what the corals are attached to inside of the bag. The plug that the coral is attached to is inserted into a piece of styrofoam and placed upside down inside the bag. This ensures that regardless of how the shipping container is handled (it's always poorly), the coral will remain covered in water since styrofoam floats.

Top-down view of the coral frag.

These are Zoanthids, a type of polyp coral. This coral looks like little purplish balls when it's closed. They're shipped attached to an aragonite plug. The reason for this is so that you can place the plug wherever you'd like inside the aquarium. This would be considered a "frag" or fragment of coral from a larger piece. Since a frag is smaller and isn't originally attached to anything, they place them on these aragonite plugs. If they didn't do this, the corals would just float around aimlessly until they got stuck under a rock or sucked into a filter.

Partially opened Zoanthid polyps and Ringo the red sea star.

Once the corals are acclimated for a little while inside the aquarium, they'll start to open up. These Zoanthid polyps started opening up after a few hours of being inside the aquarium. The bubble coral I got in this shipment probably won't open up fully for at least three days or so.

New neon green bubble coral (not fully open).

If you look closely, you can see the calcium carbonate skeleton of the coral just under some of the bubbles. This bubble coral is actually resting on a dead pineapple coral (morbid I know, but he has no idea). The stark white coral with little circles all over it is a pineapple brain coral that didn't make it. It's unfortunate, but it's something you get used to when you're in the hobby. For reference, here's the other bubble coral in the tank. This one is all white and fully open.

Love at first sight.

As you can see, or I guess as you can't see, the skeleton of this coral is completely hidden by the meaty part of the coral.

Dat New New

I know it's been a while since I've posted a picture of my aquarium, but if you must know I'm absolutely terrible at taking panoramic shots on my camera. I'm working on it, I promise, but in the meantime here's a picture that I took from far away.

I wish I owned a real camera.

A lot has changed, so hopefully you can make out some new pieces. I promise I'll have a better picture of the entire tank next time. Additionally, I'm also working on getting glamor shots of all the individual corals and fish. As always, thanks for reading! I hope I've left you feeling a little wiser, and if nothing else at least entertained. And If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.