First Coral Purchase. Some advice please...

[jsharp13]

My 120 is fully up and running. I have purchased a 10-gallon QT specifically for coral, and am about to make my first purchase. I wanted to go through my purchase and process and ask if anyone with some experience can tell me if this looks right.

First, I am looking at this package from LiveAquaria:

Beginner Polyp Pack

My plan:
-Put into a bucket and drip acclimate for an hour
-Move into a Bayer dip (10ml/cup)
-Move into QT
-Observe 3 weeks
-Dip in CoralRX
-Observe 3 more weeks
-Drip acclimate to DT

Is this sufficient? Too much? Do I need both dips?

Any help is appreciated!

 

[3dees]

all that for softies? can't say if that's too much or not enough as I have never used a qt for coral. I buy all my coral locally and float it for temp and drop them in. if I had to do that for all my softies, I think I would have left my tank as a fowlr. I guess it's up to you and I know many will say that I do it wrong, but this month makes two years and everything is doing fine.

 

[jsharp13]

Yeah, I know softies don't need quite as much as SPS or LPS, but I am all about the "system". If I start using it from the first purchase, I will always use it.

The only thing I was thinking about skipping with the softies was the Bayer dip. Seems like the only thing that gets that CoralRX doesn't is the red bugs, which I don't think are an issue with softies.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

That is a bit much especially for DD anything. Sure you can go through all of that if you wish but if it were me I'd just temp acclimate then dump half the water out of the bag and do a 1/4 cup every 15 mins swap from your tank into the bag for an hour to let the coral acclimate a bit to your parameters then put it in the dip then in a rinse and then the tank. Put in a place close to or on the bottom in med flow and med light. Allow to acclimate a few days then look for the corals sweet spot.

Actually still more than is what is necessary coming from DD. Anything they sell has been through a pretty intense quarantine.

 

[Newstead]

Have never ordered from DD and I am sure they are careful, but speaking from experience, I would go with the acclimation, Bayer dip and one 3 to 4 week quarantine. Fastest way out of this hobby is to bring aiptasia or some other pest into your DT and to fight a losing battle (been there, done that). . My LFS has tanks so clean you could drink from them ;-), quarantines, yet I still found a tiny aiptasia on the rock under a mushroom coeal from them after 2 weeks in my 5 gallon QT (used a magnifying glass to see it). Superglued over it and 2 weeks later was able to move it into my namo withput worry. Better safe than sorry!

 

[Sterling9543]

Looks like a good plan

 

[RGS2]

IMO, that's a extremely rigourous QT process for softies. There is always the "perfect" way, then the realistic/practical way. I would just do the dips, including the Bayer, and observe for a couple weeks at most.

 

[PfenWendt]

I personally will float the bag for about 15-20 min. Then drip acclimate them for an hour. I only do a dip if they don't look like there doing to good, but then again, that's just my 2 cents

 

[Louis Z]

Follow your plan and that should eliminate any possible contaminants to your fish and corals. I Qt and dip corals. qt for 3 months at least. More if they start to look sick even at 3 months. There are too many tanks on RC that have to go thru treatments, fallow period, and restarts. Don't like any of those steps? Then start from the very beginning and treat, dip, and qt all organisms. If you don't suspect the actual coral or invert that's fine but I always suspect the water they came in.