Frags with aptasia

[Geebs19]

Went to a different LFS today as I was given a buy one get one frag cars and figures why not. Now this place is in a very high end area and their tanks are severely overpriced and fish are not too bad usually 10% more then normal.

They have 1 frag tank that I was told all their corals come from WWC. I asked them to turn on whites so I could see them as I don’t run mine that blue and was told no, it’s on a schedule and couldn’t be changed. This was my first turn off. 2nd turnoff was all the frags had hair algae all over them. I was looking to get a hammer and acan and when he picked up the acan he was like you will just have to look past the aptasia. I asked if they had any without aptasia and he said no. Knowing how much people here hate aptasia and having to deal with it I decided I would not be buying there today.

So my question is, is it common to have aptasia on a frag and can it be completely removed from a frag?

 

[PDR]

It's not necessarily uncommon, but any decent LFS should be actively removing algae, aiptasia, etc from the frag plugs. I wouldn't buy from them just out of principle.

 

[Geebs19]

It's not necessarily uncommon, but any decent LFS should be actively removing algae, aiptasia, etc from the frag plugs. I wouldn't buy from them just out of principle.

I was super turned off when I saw the frag tank. The guy was like ya our coral guy hasn’t really been doing his job....

 

[norfolkgarden]

It's One of those things where, if you don't have any yet, there is nothing more enjoyable then making sure you don't have any in the future.

I wouldn't even consider it.
That's besides the way they acted.

Made the mistake of buying something with bubble algae on it once and just scraping the bubble algae off.
[emoji849]

 

[mtraylor]

aiptasia would be really hard to prevent from getting in a LFS. Cant say I have ever seen a frag plug with it on it, but little tiny ones can grow anywhere. If you see something that you like such as an sps. Just buy the coral while its on sale and remove the coral from the frag plug and throw he plug away. Dip the coral and go on your way. If the coral is really encrusted, you can cut the plug with dremel.

 

[Mebbid]

All coral shops will have some aiptasia, theres just too much volume going through most tanks to truly keep it out. Even if you can't see it yet, theres a chance it could be there.

Best bet is to quarantine the corals for a while.

 

[roberthu526]

It’s one thing to have aiptasia. It’s a whole other thing to knowingly have aiptasia and don’t do anything about it. I’d never go back to that store ever.

 

[Geebs19]

I wrote them an email about my experience and the owner responded saying they are working on getting it cleaned up and offered me 2 free frags of my choice from their next shipment before hitting their tanks. I thanked him for the offer and told him my email was not to get freebies and just wanted them to be aware of what consumers are seeing. I feel weird accepting free items over a bad review so I passed on the freebies, not in my nature or intent.