Coral from online vendor and pests

[Coralville]

If you get corals from an online vendor and they have pests, in your opinion what is an acceptable response from the vendor? In my case I dipped the corals with coral rx in batches of 2 and in each case red specks fell off the corals, so I am assuming they have red planaria. There were 4 batches total. I sent pics to the vendor. They recommended a series of weekly dips and said “oh sometimes a few pests get through the quarantine process“. That’s it. One of the corals is so badly bleached it is 75% white. I did get a refund for that one.

Needless to say I am pretty unhappy with the situation.

 

[Coralcitos]

Id be ticked about recieving the bleached one lol. But the others, theres nothing you can really do other than pick a different vendor that you feel has "cleaner" frags. Theres a few vendors i WILL NEVER buy from again because the pests they came with infested my entire tank even with rigorous dips. All these zoa spiders came from that one frag.......ts been real fun trying to get rid of them lol. Also be very weary about putting "FREEBIE" zoas in your tank. Most likey its a "FREEBIE" beacuse it has a pest of somekind.

Please DM me the vendor to never buy there ! That is horrible

 

[PeterB113]

Please DM me the vendor to never buy there ! That is horrible

Aquariumdepot.com

 

[Coralville]

Like others have said, dip everything and considering setting up a coral QT if you're really trying to keep pests out. I kind of expect a farming level operation to have some level of pests so it doesn't upset me too much when I find a worm or such in dips. Granted, I've never received an entire order of infested pieces like yourself. That would probably make me send a ??? email too, especially if you paid good money for the pleasure.

I just got a certified captive grown blasto last week that had a small dark colored worm crawl out during the RX dip. Never seen a bristle worm look like that. Realistically probably harmless, but I'm not trying to find out - into the waste bucket he went. Realized the next day the same blasto skeleton also had an aiptasia, so it ended up getting booted to my old tank anyway. From a major online supplier, although not a coral specific shop. Even captive grown pieces aren't safe.

I will say my recent order from Tidal Gardens came in pest free from the dip and was packaged/labeled nicely. Thumbs up to them in my book.

Thanks for the info. I haven’t ordered from Tidal Gardens but I do like the info/videos on their website. It’s a nice touch. Glad to hear you had a good experience, may have to order from them sometime