No fewer frags is not going to help, that is where you are wrong. And why you need to quarantine and treat all incoming corals. Acclimation over a few more hours is not the answer Either. the corals will either make it or not. the quarantine gives you a buffer so you do not affect you main system and the treatment will also disinfects the corals. personally I find treated corals do far better, color up faster and touch down/attach faster.
No one is trying to beat you up. many of us have been there and learned the hard way. Your best bet is to quarantine and treat for long term success. Try and look at what we are trying to convey try not to dismiss perspective as you disagree with part of the message. We are sharing what we have been through and learned.
^^^ This. Exactly. It takes literally months to years for a wild harvested coral to be as hardy as it's captive grown counterpart, mostly because it in itself has to become aquacultured basically.
Fish can be faster, but coral takes a long time. But that only makes it hardy, if a coral is sick, it's sick. And it will, as Greg said already, either live or die.
If you have the means, the BEST method, is to rule out other possibilities for loss. This is done via dip, drip, quarantine.
It's not that anyone does anything wrong in the hobby necessarily, it's more so that many have not learned certain things, and nobody has learned everything.
Hell, I had my water tested from the 40g when it crashed, and it showed bacterial strains of vibrio. Where that came from? Who the heck knows.
Sorry for the losses. I had a tank wipeout and it was devastating, but at least I knew why (cfl bulb feel into the sump)
I 100% agree on dipping. I dip everything and most of the time I replace the plug.
QT though? I get the theory of doing this for coral, but I'd like to know who honestly QTs their coral? Not talking fish, coral only.
A few of us on here do that. I have two tanks, and all new corals I get go into my smaller tank to monitor. There's barely any coral in there so if the tank crashes, it's only the new frags that die. Anything that lives beyond a week looking great, going into my main 16g system.
My smaller tank is a 10g with no controller, hand dosed, no ATO which means I have 100% hands on husbandry aside from it having a heater of course, so I guess 99%. This forces me to look at the tank a minimum of twice a day, which really ensures I take a good look at every coral for monitoring. I don't QT fish or inverts though. But I also don't buy them unless the LFS has had them for at least 4-5 days with zero signs of stress or illness, and eating well.
It's a PITA, but it works. I have had zero issues, and zero loses on fish, inverts, and corals in the past half a yea i've been in this routine. Literally, zero coral loss. I had one frag do poorly, which I did QT back to health, and sell. But it was dying due to my tank setup not being proper for the species (i.e. too direct of flow and too high of light PAR) tough to get indirect flow in a nano sometimes. That was a frogspawn, believe it or not. Something so simple to keep for most reefers.
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