I am pretty much brand new to SPS corals myself, I have been adding SPS coral frags to my tank for the last 5 to 6 months, for the most part I have done pretty good, so far. I have only lost two coral frags out of the 25 to 30 frags that I have bought, I attribute both of these losses due to moving the corals frags up to fast in my tank towards the light. So, I guess my first piece of advice is to acclimate your corals carefully when you start moving them up in your tank.
My second piece of advice is about the corals that you will be getting themselves, this should have really been the first bit of advice. SPS pest, this is a real issue when keeping SPS corals, a tank full of SPS corals is a major investment, and there are too many bad stories out there to not address this issue. Now is the time for you to address the health of the coral's going into your tank. I know, you want a SPS coral in your tank yesterday, so did I.
You have a couple of choices here, first is to read up on setting up a quarantine tank and learning what it really means to quarantine a SPS coral, before you buy your first coral. I see pretty much all the local reefers in my area, they run down to the LFS waiting on the plane to come in with the new corals for the week, look in the frag tank, snatch up the coral that has just came in from the whole seller, the coral I am sure wasn't dipped or quarantined by the whole seller, and I know it wasn't dipped or quarantined by the LFS. Then I am pretty sure these reefers run home with their coral frag, most I am sure, just put the frag into the tank, I am sure there are some that dip the coral one time, and then into the tank it goes. This just won't do, you are only asking for bad things to happen here.
Your second choice, you can buy corals from the for sale section in this Forum, most of the time at greatly reduced prices compared to the online retailers. My advice here, read this section every time you go online, the object here is to learn who the best sellers are, the ones with the best reputations, the ones with a reputation for selling quality pest free frags out of their own tanks, until you learn who these reefers are, you have a third choice.
Your third choice, which is the choice I have made, I only buy corals for my tank from the very best online retailers, and sponsers of this Forum. My reasoning is this, they are the best online retailers for a reason, they can't be out there selling a bunch of pest infected frags and stay in business for very long, do I still dip these corals, yes I do.
I know, this most likely isn't the advice you were looking for when you made this post
But I think
its the best advice you will get in the long run with your choice of keeping SPS corals.
