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[OldandNew]

I looked around and instead of using the Indonesian market, I went to this expat Brit who has been quality tanks for about 5 years now. 1) He speaks English. 2) WOW was all I could say when I walked into his place.

I looked at his display tanks and they are immaculate. And all the different kinds of coral!!!

So he is delivering 110 lbs of live sand. He has a particular place that he sends a wholesaler to for his sand. There is a bit of iron in it, so once back at the shop he stirs it around and takes a magnet to it. Kind of hard to avoid the iron, these islands were made from volcanos.

Then since I want the run the live rock down the middle of the tank, it being a room divider, but only 18 inches wide itself, he figured all we could get into the tank would be about 40 Kilos (88 lbs) of live rock. He is hand picking it, guarenteeing that it will be at least 50% coraline. We also picked up 4 pieces of coral which he said we could put in right away. The wife then saw a Regal Angel from the Red Sea and had to have it. He is holding it till he is comfortable that the tank is stable.

He says when everything going into the tank is live and freshly live, there is no cycling. It is already cycled.

He has all kinds of coral in growing tanks for sale. Most $4-5 each. I did pay $10 for what he calls a green metalic donut coral. The three brains were $5 each. All were about 4 inches.

He has all kinds of clams in his display tanks, one probably 18 inches across.

While he is more expensive than the locals, he only works with ethical collectors and is a member of CITES. A lot of the local collectors for the trade use cyanide to collect the fish. I guess that is one way to ensure there are no paracites, inside or our.

Anyway, he is delivering the sand, rocks and NSW this evening and has a crew to help set it up. I'm hyped.

Hew, if NSW is the way to go, then I'll probably just have to go that way.

I'll update my profile and take some pics once the dust settles.

Cheers,
Ray