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| temperature acclimating the coral |
A few days ago I found a Craigs List post for coral. It looked pretty cheap with zoas starting at around five dollars and going up to thirty. I made a phone call and hubby plus some friends who were in town and I drove about 15 minutes to the location. There I was stunned at the quality of the coral.
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| my zoanthids |
They had four tanks. One frag tank, two display tanks with frag shelves and one new tank still cycling. I have never been to any LFS that matched the beauty and health of these corals. ReefCulture is the best Phoenix LFS for coral. By far they have the healthiest, but these two brothers on Craigs List put them to shame. We will definitely continue to buy from them.
The most awesome part is they have only been doing it for two years. They said their dad has been doing salt tanks his whole life but reefs are new for all of them and they are awesome at it.
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| my pulsing xenia |
Here's the more awesome part, I bought a rock with about 100+ zoa polyps for $20, two stalks of Pulsing Xenia for $20 and about a 2 inch mat of Green Star Polyps for $10. Total spent was $50 which is less than what the zoa rock would have been sold for at our LFS. Now, I don't think I picked a good piece of GSP, I think I accidentally chose the brown star polyps, however next time I go I'll just look harder and have two varieties of GSP growing in the tank.
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| my possible not so green green star polyps |
After acclimating and dipping in Coral RX, they were all pretty angry and stayed closed up for the night. But this morning all of the zoas are open and the GSP is starting to peek out. The Pulsing Xenia may be in too much flow, but I am finding too much conflicting information on how to keep these guys. Some sites say they do better in low to moderate flow, others say they do better right up next to the power head. So far, they look they're getting beaten pretty hard but the polyps are still open which by all my research indicates they aren't too pissed off. I'm pretty excited since now I can officially say I have a reef tank! :D
About Coral RX
Coral RX is a preventative dip to remove parasites from corals before adding them to your tank. We decided to go ahead and invest in it despite the fact we had no coral that were at risk. Our reasoning is if we got a bad first batch, we didn't want to risk an infestation of the tank.
What I wanted to say though is that Amazon has terrible pricing for the product so instead we made the drive to ReefCulture since Coral RX has an exclusive contract with them in Arizona. Amazon was selling it for $27.99 we bought it for $19.99 so once again, look around before you buy.
