How many aquarium systems do you keep?
3 - ~240g system, ~83g Frag/Prop system, ~30g QT
What is the focus of each system?
Display Tank - SPS with a few softies/LPS
Propagation - SPS growout, fragging
Quarantine - permanent QT for new fish
What lighting do you use and why?
Multiple color LED for DT and frag, Blue/White LED for QT. I use LEDs for a few reasons:
1. I find they grow/color coral at least as well as MH, if set up properly
2. Minimal maintenance (no replacing bulbs or spectrum shifts)
3. I've had issues with cooling in the past
4. I like the controllability.
I'm currently using a Vertex Illumina SR260 with 6 multicolor pads for my DT, a Metis Hyperion R2 for the Frag tank, and a Steve's LEDs DIY kit for the QT.
Do you dose? If yes, what do you use and how do you add it to your system (by automation or by hand)?
I dose the Frag and DT. For the DT, I use a combination of kalk and two part, both automated through dosing pumps. All of my top off water does not have kalk due to the varying evaporation through the year. For my Frag tank I'm only using two part, again automated, but I'm considering a kalk reactor there too.
Do you use a Calcium Reactor? If yes, what media do you use?
No.
Do you test your water? If yes, how often and what brand of test kits?
Yes. I test about once a week for Ca, Alk, Mg, P04, NO3, and Salinity. I use a variety of test kits from Salifert, Hanna, and Red Sea.
What products are you most likely to purchase online and why?
Pretty much everything. I buy a few times a year in bulk during the sale periods. I haven't been able to find anything cheaper locally (even Salt - Red Sea Coral Pro is ~$55 shipped from Drs. Foster and Smith if you time it right). I would like to buy more from LFS, but they're not price competitive at all. However, I do buy frozen and live food locally. I'd like it if I could find some live phyto, rotifers, and gut-loaded brine shrimp locally to save the hassle of cultivating my own.
When do you shop a LFS (weekends, payday, when they post new shipments)?
Mostly weekends, but if a new shipment of corals comes in, I may stop by. I'd stop by more if there was someplace closer to me (not much on the North side).
When shopping a LFS, what are you looking for in livestock (fish, softies, LPS, SPS or NPS)?
Primarily SPS. I'm more or less stocked with fish, so I don't anticipate too many more.
If our sponsors created a monthly MARSH shopping day (lets say the 1st Saturday of every month), would you be more likely to go?
Yes.
What is your biggest complaint about LFS? For example: dead livestock, no visible prices , hours of operation
I don't like how most of the LFS keep their fish at low salinity. Acclimating something from SG of 1.018 to 1.0264 is not fun. I've also had issues with health of fish in the area, since they come in and get sold on the same day many times. I'd love it if someone would offer QT services (for a fee, of course), so I could take down my QT. Along those lines, when I was stocking my tank, I would gladly have paid extra to just hand my list of fish to a LFS and ask them to find everything on the list (in phases), QT, and then give it to me at my Salinity for easy acclimation.
There are also only a couple places that have some of the nicer SPS, and the prices tend to be very high. As an example, I saw some tiny 1/2"-3/4" frags of a Red Dragon deepwater in an LFS going for $80 apiece. Buying from another person on ReefCentral or Reef2Reef (or even locally), I could frags that were twice as big for ~$40 as part of a frag pack. Right now, Copps has some very large colonies of Red Dragon on sale for $200-$350, including shipping. Another idea I think would work in Houston is selling on consignment. I understand the possibility of pests, but that could be avoided. If local reefers could have sections of tanks in a LFS to sell from, I'm sure they'd pay a fee for the convenience. Lastly, requests for coral orders would be nice as well.
Otherwise, most LFS also have pretty poor guarantees compared to online merchants. Not naming names, but one LFS sold me three foxfaces before one lived (I have a full stock of antibiotics, copper, prazipro, etc now after trying to save the first two). So that's ~$120 in fish, $50+ in meds, and, most of all, the pain from watching them die. I could have bought the fish online with nothing else and paid full shipping three times for the same price, none of the pain, AND been reimbursed for the loss. Of the fish I've bought locally, I've had somewhere around a 40% mortality rate (~15 total fish, 6 deaths). Online, from LiveAquaria/DiversDen, I've lost 1 out of 15 or so (~7%). BlueZoo is another story (2/3 died, I'll never use them again, ever).
