Waiting...waiting...my shrooms are enroute...

[Sk8r]

...but won't get here until tomorrow, when I have an appointment. My spouse is going to get the box off the porch and wait.

Main thing is, that shipping packaging (Live Aquaria and most every shipper) is designed to suffer delays. The shrooms will tuck down and 'sleep' through it all, and that bag will keep them safe so long as it's closed.

My method for receiving coral specimens is to establish a little qt for the ones that need observation (in this case the zoa, because it can hide eggs of nudibranch predators, and dips won't kill eggs) and I'll coral dip (Revive) the rest that will be waiting only overnight for introduction into the display. I rinse in a little bath of tank water so the Revive definitely goes away. I have room enough in my sump to set these shrooms to wait the night to go into the display. I find haste makes a stew of things if you rush right away to position a new coral. it's how accidents happen and how you end up second-guessing your positioning and spending far too much time with diminishing energy for critical decisions. I'll look them over, have the lights over the sump on until dark, then give them a night's rest.

There's another reason for the night in the sump. If any shroom looks loose in its grip on a rock, it stays there, recovering. Only firmly anchored shrooms go into the DT, the rockwork of which is complex, heavy, and immoveable without dire rethinks: not that kind of place you can get back of to rescue a wild shroom.

Next morning I'll have a good look at their size, number, and color in some degree of spreading for the light, and convey them one by one to a considered position in the tank, color balanced against color, for the way I want them to grow and multiply.

Multiply! Aye, there's the rub...(the Bard.) If you put shrooms on a structural (unmoveable rock) you will find them taking that rock. I once (deciding to go stony) traded a 15"x 8" rock covered in discosoma purples to the store, got myself some items in trade---and the store didn't have that rock a week before somebody bought it. So everybody was happy. But I could MOVE that rock. If you ever buy something you aren't sure of, set it on a rock apart from other rocks.

So, I'll plan and imagine the rocks (structural, by intent this time) all covered in the various colors. I'm reining in the gyre pump to just take care of debris, because shrooms don't like violent current. My lights are Ecolabs Radion set to one of their Radience pattern. And the discosomas (first-in) are reacting with love.

Now let's just hope that box arrives safely.