DOA Policy
Shipping a living animal is the riskiest thing we do, and no amount of care removes the risk entirely. This page says what we do when it goes wrong — and it is written down because a policy invented after the fact is not a policy, it is a negotiation.
If it arrives dead
What to do, in this order
Photograph it in the bag
Unopened, within 24 hours of delivery. This is the one step that cannot be recovered later.
Write to us
The PL number, the photograph, and the time it arrived. Nothing else is needed.
We reply the same working day
With a refund or a replacement on the next suitable shipping window — your choice, not ours.
Why the bag matters
Why must the bag be unopened?
Because once it is opened nobody can separate a shipping loss from an acclimation loss. Water temperature, ammonia and pH all change the moment the seal breaks, and the claim stops being a fact and becomes an argument neither of us can win.
What if I already opened it?
Write anyway, with whatever photographs you have. We would rather refund an ambiguous case than argue one — the 24-hour rule exists to make most cases unambiguous, not to give us a way out.
What counts as dead on arrival?
No tissue response after a full drip acclimation, or obvious tissue loss in the bag. A coral that arrives closed and opens over the following week is not a DOA — it is a coral that has just been in a box.
Does the policy cover weather you shipped into?
It does, and that is the point. But we would rather not use it: outside 5–32 °C along the route the box waits, and we write to you the day before rather than shipping and quoting this page afterwards.