Well, I am currently with the fam in myrtle beach and figured id throw a post in about my “reef related” adventures. Tbh, no good news so far. The aquarium down here was kinda smallish, but did have a lot for the kids to do. Hands on tanks with rays and horseshoe crabs and the new shark exhibit was pretty cool. They built a u-shaped tunnel under the shark/sawfish display that gives ya a pretty cool way to view all the animals including some huge moray eels and a sea turtle. But that was about all that was good. The reef featured about 90% Softies and polyps and the few lps and sps they had were dying off pretty quickly. The one huge tank full of tangs and angels was a nightmare. Only a few of them didn’t have torn fins and extreme hole. I really wanted to see if they were hiring, just to take on the care of the “reef” type tanks. Even the lighting sucked. We could tell there wasn’t much in the way of actinics, even my wife said these fish looked pretty bland compared to what she is uses to seeing at home or in lfs in our area.
Now… the only lfs I could find close was marine critters depot. Seems like the guy is mainly a service company with a small shop for some retail. First, the hours were way weird. Tues, wed, and thurs 6pm to 9pm. And saturday 11am to 5pm. Wow. Although the store was tiny, he had a huge amount of stock in the store. All acrylic tanks, plumbed in by him it seemed. And a boat load of coral drags and such. Prices were normal for delaware I thought. Most frags were 20bux, 3 for 50, and 5 for70. And the corals looked really good… until I saw them! Don’t get me wrong, every lfs has had issues with flatworms from time to time. They come in from a distributor and spread… it happens. I have had my battles with them. But normally the ones I (or glenn) spot look like spend of red algae. These were the size of my pinky nail!!! I even asked the guy (who was extremely friendly btw) if he would take some friendly advise… and he said sure. But when I pointed them out to him, which were killing a huge green sinularia btw, he said " oh yeah, I know. I had a corks erase in there to eat em, but he jumped out a few weeks ago". So, although there was some really sweet stuff I would of prolly taken with me when I leave saturday… that plan was canceled!
Gonna stop by a place in virginia beach on the way home. Supposed to be huge. I talked to the owner at a trade show in orlando and he told me to swing by, he would give me the back stage tour. Ill let u guys know how it goes. Its called animal zoo or something hung like that.
