Coral Transplant: Moving your Tank from Coast to Coast

A few months ago, a hobbyist from the West Coast joined our local (Philly) club and started asking about moving to the East Coast.  The plans for his move are now fully underway and he plans to arrive on the right coast in June.  In preparation of that move, our friend from the West Coast shipped over $10,000 worth of coral to me on Friday.  Now, remember, I have never met this guy.  He doesn’t know me from Adam.  But, he got to know us from our club.

So, I spent last Friday unpacking, acclimating and organizing over 100 frags and colonies plus 2 picasso clowns and 2 black ocellaris clowns.  I had help from a couple of club members and now we are starting to divvy up these corals around the club so that we have a fighting chance of keeping most of them alive until he is ready to take them back over the summer!

So, those not familiar with reefing and the clubs may be asking yourself many questions, much like my wife did.  Why would he do this without knowing you?  Why would I take these corals without knowing him?  Well, the answer is simple really.  Folks in this hobby help each other out.  We are trying to be custodians of the reefs in our own little way.  So, the goal is to ensure that his corals remain healthy and happy and that they grow enough that we can each have a little frag.  This means our tanks benefit, our wallets benefit and the reefs benefit because we are propogating coral without taking form the reefs.

So far, the corals look good.  We have lost a couple, as is normal with a mass shipment.  After all, that was 100 baggies of coral.  And the big box (there were 2 boxes) totally blew out in shipping!  Luckily, no bags broke.

Here are some shots of the coral from the receiving side!

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