New Frags: Chili Pepper Montipora, Bird's Nest & Blue-tipped Acropora

I read a post once from someone who had moved away from San Diego saying how much he missed the community and how much we're spoiled by all the available corals in the area. So, when I saw a post in SDMAS about corals for sale, I made sure to take advantage of the situation.

I missed the initial post yesterday, but it turned out that they were still available. They were only 6 miles away from me!

Here they are in separate containers being equilibrated with my tank's sea water.

Acclimating New Frags

I checked the temperature with a digital thermometer and they matched my tank, so I didn't have to worry about equilibrating temperature. I removed about half the sea water and added three turkey baster volumes of my tank's sea water to each container. After 5 minutes, I repeated the addition. I did this a few more times and emptied the container when it got too full. I usually have a beer to keep me from speeding things up.

Then, I placed the new corals at the bottom of the tank so that they could adapt to the new light intensity at a lower level. I'll eventually glue them up on the live rock. Click on the pics below for more detail.

Chili Pepper Montipora

Bird's Nest (freshly cut & glued)

Blue-tipped Acropora sp.