I have 3 banggai cardinals and I think 2 are pairing off. 1 came from live aquaria and 2 are from @doubleorange . I’d love to breed them too! Just to do my part to keep the wild ones in the ocean!
Went to the fish bowl yesterday. Was hoping there were some cool leftover frags from the big event. NOPE! They did have some brown ORA corals that were way too expensive. At some point I need to go to TL Reefs in MT Home. I'm tired of always being disappointed when I look for frags. Frags are either brown, unhealthy, and or over priced. It seems if you had a store it would be more profitable to frag from healthy mother colonies then buy from the big wholesalers. Over time you could have quite the selection of nice stuff. Maybe for the masses this doesn't matter? I guess people will buy anything with a price tag? Sorry if this seems like a rant. I was just disappointed in the coral.
The Fish Bowl is a good place to pick up colonies of soft and lps corals at a great price. TL Reefs is for sure the best place in the state to get SPS corals and really all types of "designer" corals.
No doubt TFB gets nice stuff from time to time. I only pop in once or twice a year, Thanksgiving/Christmas and always disappointed. I expect a nice selection considering many people are out spending money they don't have, but, deep sigh, just isn't so. That said, those of you whom attended Splash and posted pics have posted nice looking stuff, it was just gone when I arrived. I'm a stick guy, but I went in there looking for LPS. There was a brown torch for $20..... Also, this is off topic, but stores keep buying from ORA. Why? ORA has some of the best coral around but if you buy from them your locked into the price they set. I would love to have a red planet but I'm not paying $60. Hobbiest sell it all day online for $30. This goes back to my earlier point. If your a store, grow these things out, frag'em, sell more, and make more( a store could easily double there investment in a year). And birdsnest for anything over $20.....cough....cough......I'll give you some! Maybe there is a reason I don't have my own business.
I assure you they were looking great last week. It is easy to turn a SPS brown or white. However, it is really hard to maintain SPS colors especially in a retail environment where colonies are coming in and out frequently. The nutrient levels are too unstable.
Could lighting have anything to do with it? I know everything looked brown when I was there but it didn’t seem like they had the blues on ...
Speaking of lighting ... my acan has changed color instead of being a bluish green with a more yellow ring and purple accents, it’s turned very similar to Another one I have that is more of a greenish outer with bright orange ring and purple accents. I was really digging the yellow color! When I got home from vacation I found the acan, which I’d placed near my echinata, being eaten by said echinata! I lost one head before I realized it. Oops. I guess the Ech didn’t appreciate the new neighbor. It sits close to other acans just fine though ... picky coral! Look at the color change. The bottom head is still yellow. I guess it gets less light. The killer echinata!