When receiving corals online or through a reputable dealer or from a fellow reefkeeper, It is important to obtain the healthiest specimens. There are many reasons for picking healthy specimens but one extremely important reason is that you don’t want to expose your saltwater reef aquarium to unwanted parasites or disease.
One way of making sure you are not bringing unwanted parasites into your reef tank is using a coral dip. A coral dip is simple to use and every one has a different set of directions that are easy to follow. Mainly you will add a little coral dip (or Lugol’s solution, iodine solution) to some tank water and soak your new coral for a period of time. The soak time is dependent on the solution you are using, the MediCoral Coral Dip – 60 mL – 2 oz. as shown above has a soak time of 8-11 minutes for soft corals and 7-10 minutes for sps corals.
The Medicoral Dip comes in two size bottles a 2oz and a 1oz bottle. You may be thinking that it may not be worth to spend the $10-$20 bucks on a bottle but keep in mind that only 20 drops of this solution is combined with one gallon of saltwater (you can use fresh made saltwater). Also that dipping your corals will prevent coral eating organisms from destroying your whole tank, this hobby is expensive and a little preventive care goes a long way.
I chose Medicoral dip for dipping my corals because it has a good name among reefers on the online forums. When I started out on this hobby I had pyramid snails, sundail snails, zoanthid spiders and flatworms that all caused big tank problems. I wouldn’t even think about adding another piece of coral without dipping it first.
If you haven’t tried to purchase corals online then you should really give it a try. There are many reputable business such as That Fish Place, Dr’s Foster’s and Smith’s Live Aquaria and Pacific East Aquaculture. I have been dealing with these three since I started my saltwater aquarium over five years ago and I have always been very happy with my purchases. All three places have excellent customer service and a good selection at reasonable prices.
In addition to online businesses you could also try reef forums. Recently I picked up five coral frags like the Zoanthids pictured above and below on reefcentral from a hobbyist such as myself. I received 3 frags of Zoanthids, one Monti cap, and a Xenia with overnight shipping for $75. But before you buy make sure you do a little research on your seller. You can do this buy searching for previous sales and pming there buyers on there experience with the seller. You can also search through the sellers older posts to see how knowledgeable they are on keeping corals. Requesting pictures of the mother colony or frags lets you inspect the health of the sellers tank and the quality of the frags. Be sure to ask the seller what type of lighting and flow the tank has because the frags could be a different color under different lighting.
My recent experience over at reefcentral has been a great one, the seller was selling 5 polyped zoa frags and the actual frags I received where 7-12 polyps each. I also got two chunks of Xenia and two one inch frags of Monti cap. For $75 it was an outstanding deal and I will definitely buy from the same seller again.
My candy cane Coral trumps the new Zoanthids on the right side, but in time the two new zoa colonies will grow out on the live rock.
