Purchasing Coral tips

[PrettyFish]

Is it reef safe to buy a BioCube safe coral from a store that is about an 1.5 hours from my house? It would be ricordia, zoas and anything else that is okay for a 29g biocube with stock lights.
Thanks for any feedback.

 

[Mattyfelts]

As long as your not stopping, and they arent gonna freeze or boil in the car. Just take them straight home and should be fine, think of over night shipping for example, that is much longer than 1.5 hours

 

[bribo12]

They will be more than fine for that duration

 

[PrettyFish]

Great! I work an hour and a half away, and a LFS has nice looking coral. Bern keeping my eye on their offers.

 

[bribo12]

Great! I work an hour and a half away, and a LFS has nice looking coral. Bern keeping my eye on their offers.

Yeah I've bought corals from lfs as far as 3 hours away before an they did great!

 

[Sniperhank]

Corals are really resilient. Most of the ones in my tank are shipped overnight to me. If they can be in a bag for 24 hours and travel across the country, you can totally bring coral home for a 2 hour trip in a bag. I even did that on a return trip I did from Baltimore...though I did learn one lesson from that one, always have a styrofoam container in your car to put your coral into. This will prevent temp spikes, which could hurt your coral.

 

[Dav3]

I've done 6+ hour drive with sps & lps corals with no problem. As mentioned just put the bags in some sort of insulated container to avoid temp swings.

 

[PrettyFish]

Thanks for the advice!

 

[Animal-Chin]

I buy my coral at lunch and get home at 5:30 pm, never had an issue. They just sit on my desks for 4 hours in the bag...

 

[TheTodd]

And remember that many are shipped across the world, which I'm guessing could be hours or days. I've had all my frags sent through Mail, Next Day (I buy from somewhat local people) and have not lost one yet.

 

[54seaweed]

I always use a Styrofoam cooler to transport coral and fish ,
helps keep bags upright and they don't get tossed around the car,
and it helps keep them more at a steady temp

 

[PrettyFish]

Great advice-
Today, I bought a nice rock with mushrooms and some polyps attached on the same rock. Fish Store seemed very clean and had a good selection.
One concern, my two Enerald Crabs are all over the new mushroom rock and I saw one pick at the mushrooms.
I also got an orange Ricordia, too. Looks like it has three mouths. My clown fish and 6 line wrasse have been checking it out .

 

[Sniperhank]

Emeralds are opportunistic and will go towards an easy meal...as are all crabs. I'm sure they are cleaning up fresh new crap and algae rather than the coral itself...but always keep an eye on it.