I look online and see all the different fish and coral websites. They have every color zoa and other corals that are an amazing variety of colors. I go to the local stores and some are very big and nice and 90 percent of the stuff there is green or brown and its all the same type of corals. I really hate paying a lot of shipping and the thought of having to take a day off of work to wait for the package, but I am thinking I might have to start doing this.

If you've got a bunch of saltwater fish stores nearby, there's a good chance you've also got a reef club near you. Have you looked into that yet? I've already bought from online which has been good and there are some great deals you can get here in the Classifieds, but shipping is a bit of a pain and having to be home to wait for a package is not always possible. IF you have a local reef club, I'd bet you'd have access to a lot of awesome coral frags from member tanks too.

If you do opt for going to online vendors, maybe you can have it shipped to you AT your work address?

yeah, and plus most places have a free shipping if 150 is met. just save up and buy what you want with free shipping

There are local Reef Clubs, I am definitely trying to go there first for stuff. The prices at stores and online once shipping is calculated in is pretty high. I am just curious as to why the brick and mortar stores don't carry the nice livestock you can get online.
Resonance, I would just stay home if I had too, I am not planning on ordering that frequently. I would think even if I got it shipped to work. I would nto feel comfortable leaving it in the back for what could be hours.

livestock looks better online because no one has invented a way to bump the saturation at an LFS.

+1

online has a little tool called photoshop

Many pictures are also taken under heavy actinic and other color/fluorescence-intensifying lighting. More reliable sites will list what lighting and bulb combinations are used.

It seems to me that also a lot of the online stores are growing their own corals. Hence why they have nice stuff, but it might be out of stock a lot of times. Yes, your also going to be dealing with photoshop a lot.

Same goes for fish and all other living stuff.

I know lighting and photoshop are a factor, but if I order an orange and blue zoas and when I get them they shouldn't be olive drab green... pyrocreeps explination makes sense to me, that if they get a nice coral they can jsut keep growing them and fragging it.

I think I need to do the actinic retrofit on my tank, maybe it will make me feel better about my stuff.

Not always the case. Some dealers do saturate their pictures, but it is usually easy to tell when that is done.
Some are so ridiculously saturated that it is not even funny.
Most local shops, and I said most, not all, because there are those that do specialize in high-end corals, only stock the bread and butter corals, those that sell fast and can fund their overhead.
Plus, most local shops are not growing out the corals like a lot of the online dealers and selling frags of those corals, so lighting is minimal, same with spectrum and par.

I know in my area (Colorado), you will not find any really nice corals in LFS - you need to meet up with locals and reef club members. That's where you find the good stuff IME.

What do you guys mean my saturation?

CA?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorfulness#Saturation
also:
http://www.bairarteditions.com/pages/tutor...p/cbhuesat.html

i think bird's answer (they purchase the same old same old every time) and the good stuff gets snagged up by the employee's and their friends before the LFS even puts it out on display.

Would these be an example of heavy lighting and saturation?

http://www.njreefers.org/joomla/index.php?...p;topic=23331.0

Find a better LFS, one that specializes in marine if you can. Some of ours are filled with nothing but ugly brown shiat. Others have tanks upon tanks of ridiculously gorgeous speciments (for cheaper!). I think it's the policy of the one (chain) to buy cheap corals and sell them to idiots at high prices. People who know simply don't shop there.

My lfs is the same way. very drab, boring corals. There is a new not-so-local fish store that is collecting higher end corals and growing them out to frag. She has some nice stuff that isn't for sale until it is large enough to sell the frags.

I am still finding new stores to go too, All the ones I find still the majority is still plain stuff. Some have a few nice things or corals the other store never carries. They are expensive to me and I don't know prices, Its hard to use websites to gauge prices in stores, they are always cheaper online, then add in shipping.... The one that I go to the most, is the size of a small supermarket.
Let me ask you guys this. I am located in central NJ(not to far from Philly or NY) , I know I can go in any direction and find more LFS's. I have been reluctant to drive that far, mosting because I was nverous about having a fish or coral sitting in the bag for an hour or two in the car. I guess that is nuts since, they ship corals over night, that has to be way worse. How far are you guys willing ot drive for your LFS stores?

Just a heads up here. I have seen these guys stuff in person; they came to a frag swap here in Seattle. The colors have been bumped up slightly, but a lot of what they have did actually look that good. They also had them under LED which is part of it. I got to see the rainbow acan that is shown in the link and it's colors really do pop out and are that distinct.

Just had to say sense I was really impressed with the stuff that they were selling.



Farthest I've gone is about 30 minutes. Though due to traffic I've had frags stuck in bags for about an hour and a half at the most. Everything came out fine though. Gotta figure that they go through a lot worse during shipping to stores/when buying online.