Acclimation Excerpt from my new book

heres an excerpt from a short book im working on based on this topic

"The Reef Keeper"
Introduction to Acclimation:
Written by Jerrad Brown
so youve got your tank setup, water clean, Live rock is healthy and full of bright coralline algae? so now what? if your starting a new Reef your going to want some corals, sounds easy right?, head on over to the local fish store pick out your favorite little sea creatures and run home to add them to your own tank. But wait! There’s ALOT more to this process than just placing these delicate creatures in your tank and hoping they make it through the night. I’d like to take some time here and clarify on a few very key fundamentals of this acclimation process.

First let me make one thing very clear. I am not a professional, I don’t claim to know anything that I haven’t researched over many years of trial and error and most importantly any advice given here is based on my own individual experience and in no way should be taken out of its appropriate context of Reef keeping and raising corals.

That said were ready to begin the process of Acclimation or even better described as the process of an individual organism adjusting to a gradual change in its environment, (such as a change in temperature, humidity, photoperiod, or pH) allowing it to maintain performance across a range of environmental conditions. Its important to note here what is probably the most important element of this entire process, Which is, of course Water.
Water is the foundation of the life cycle and the basis for all living organisms in the world and yet so often in the Reef Keeping lifestyle this is one element that simply gets overlooked or neglected, If you’ve been an addict as long as some of us then you realize the importance of maintaining absolute pristine water conditions in your reef tank and you also realize the detrimental effects that any change in these “Parameters” may have. Therefore the question must be raised “what are my water Parameters?”.
I will try and approach this topic from the standpoint of one who has experienced just about every extreme possible in this lifestyle from complete system shutdowns where corals have died from the sheer cold to extreme heat where heaters have malfunctioned and remained on heating the water to well over 90 deg fh killing several inverts and some corals. To just plain silly instances like when the cat knocked over a plant that was located on a shelf directly above my old open top aquapod.
Disastrous moments like these certainly are frustrating and very disheartening, especially after all of the work and time we all know this lifestyle seems to require. At the same time though I belive they are very important learning curves for the Reef Keeper to experience as they will teach him, not only how to avoid these unfortunate mishaps from happening again, but perhaps a lesson can be learned in patience and careful thought. Perhaps you may realize a more efficient way of running your system, or perhaps you may not learn anything and just kill your cat. The important thing to realize here is the vital role your playing in this process of re-creating a small piece of the ocean and how delicate it really is. It is indeed the most delicate thing I have ever encountered aside from the birth of my son."