Hello from Seattle

[matthias_bln]

You might also want to look into PNWMAS which has members in Oregon & Washington, with monthly meetings, raffles, and occasional frag swaps. We also have a Member Map showing fellow reefers and coral/fish shops on a map. See http://www.pnwmas.org

Welcome to R2R!

I did actually join there as a supporting member in October (matthias), but have not yet been very active. Will definitely spend more time there! Thanks for the reminder!

 

[Samina]

Welcome to R2R! And welcome to the salty side of aquaria, you’ll find it’s addicting!

 

[hotdrop]

What's still blurry to me is what kind of pests I could expect from corals and whether those pests would live on in the tank and potentially "jump" to other corals. I watched a video (I think FishOfHex) which talked about how each coral should be quarantined for 78 days, however I can add more corals anytime and for each coral that timeline would be separate.

I guess I know that two tanks for (1) fish and (2) invertebrates/coral. At some point I simply made the call that I need to get started vs. spending more and more time on listening to various opinions .. Usually I'm more the "learn while doing" type.

When you look at treatment and quarantine you need to really look past the timelines and ask what are you treating and doing qt for. In this case it sounds like the 78 days is likely for ick (fish disease) the eggs can take up to that time to hatch out and theoretically they could stick to your coral and introduce a source of ick into your tank. This is a pretty extreme level of qt but may be required if you are trying to run a system completely free of any potential ick.
This works because there are no fish and therefore no host. Once everything hatched out it will complete it’s short hostless lifecycle and be eradicated.
This won’t be sufficient for coral based pests because the coral is the host and can support the Entire lifecycle, you need to take a more targeted approach to kill adults after they hatch but before reproductive maturity.The effective dip varies by pest.

 

[MWinchell13]

Haven't gotten further south than Renton for fish stores yet .. But I will when I get the chance! Any particular recommendations?

Well, I’ll shamelessly plug Aquarium Paradises since that’s where I work. We are down in Lakewood near Tacoma. Up more in you’re aris barrier Reef in Bellevue.