Large SPS Coral Box Purchase

[wom001]

Hey Yall, Just got a call from a friend I have in the hobby. He said he found a LFS that orders boxes of mini to colony sized and was willing to sell him a full box for a good price. Hes all paid up and the box is ordered and scheduled to be here on Friday morning. He called to ask for a second pair of hands to help dip / QTing them and while im versed in this area this whole deal seems too good to be true.

Anyone have any experience with this? And while I have purchased and dipped multiple sps frags / mini colonies i haven't had any experience doing things on this type of scale. Any tips or tricks to try out?

Thanks yall!

 

[Jmareef1022]

Sweet make sure to take pics, I assume he's good friends with the lfs owner and is willing to hook a reefer up. I'm curious what it went for and for how many types of colonies.

 

[Epic Aquaculture]

If possible remove any acro crabs from the colonies before dipping as they most likely won't survive. Set them aside in a bowl of tank water then put them back in the colonies when you place them in the DT. If you see any Gorilla crabs, make sure to get them out before you put the colonies in the DT. Wild colonies are also MUCH more sensitive to dips, etc. than aquacultured frags, so expect some RTN or STN and make sure to frag the colony immediately if it starts to recede in order to try and save some of it. Should be fun to see what he got!

 

[jda]

If you are putting them into a tank without any coral, then I wait to dip them for a few weeks - of course, this is not possible if you are sharing a system. I find that more survive if you wait to dip them until they are adjusted a bit. Bayer is more gentle than CoralRx, Revive or the like.

If they are mari, then scrub the bases or remove the corals from them.

Have your frag plugs, bone cutters and glue ready for quick fragging... they can STN quickly.

Keep them off of the substrate - eggcrate is fine.

I put them under tons of light - 6500k MH. This is where they came from and I find this to have the best results when importing wild stuff.

If you lose a few, do not take it too personally... everybody does. If they are mari, then you will have more success than wild.

 

[Softhammer]

Very very good advice above.

 

[tripdad]

Use a larger container and place a small powerhead in it to cause flow over and around all corals, when you do finally dip. And by all means, save those acro crabs!

 

[Surfzone]

As far as it being too good to be true it isn't. Back when I worked in a LFS we has a supplier who sold coral boxes. You could get softie box, LPS box, SPS box, or a mixed box. I want to say wholesale they where about $100 and we would put our markup on the box and sell it off to the customer, sometimes we would order a box or two so sell in the store or use to fill service clients tanks. So I guess it's up to the LFS if they want to do that kind of thing or not.

 

[wom001]

Well we have done this type of deal before but not for sps. He used to get boxes of Acans for about 450 for 15+ pieces. We recently visited him after he called us to come look at some wrasses he got in but I didn't realize my buddy negotiated picking up a box. The lady box he opened had some great deep waters but them some **** green stags which is why I think he might get screwed on it. However it turns out I'll have some frags for a fallow tank

 

[Graffiti Spot]

All depends on where the corals are coming from. Not many good sites opened because Indo shut down. Also depends on the price paid for the box. All good advice above. I would never order a box from a local fish store around here. Hopefully no one pulls the two nice colonies from the box before you guys get it. I would tell the store to make sure the box is unopened if I was paying for it.