With anything, setting a budget will aid you in this hobby. This is especially true in selecting corals. Corals will eat your wallet up for lunch, and maybe dinner too, to understand why corals are so good at eating your wallet up we need to understand the basic concept of corals: corals are collected from the ocean and then either sold or fragged from a mother colony. A typical one inch frag will run you $40.
To illustrate how much $40 can buy you, I can fill my gas tank up right now for my car for $32 (and that is with premium). So instead of buying gas for your car, you have just convinced yourself that buying that coral is in fact better than buying a tank of gas.
This is of course because of two main reasons: 1) corals are pretty and “cool” and 2) WE HAVE to have them. The major drawback to corals is that they 3) can die. Mainly because either 1) you are beginning and are still learning or it may be 2) you have a cute invertebrate in your tank, unbeknown to you, that invertebrate in fact eats that coral you just happened to put in your tank and is drooling at the mouth upon seeing it. The last reason and possibly the most deadly is of course 3) picked a coral that looked “pretty”.
So in keeping with this, I suggest that if you are newly started in the saltwater hobby that you select corals that are for beginners. Unless of course that you don’t want to have gas to work, go to the local fish store, etc.
So please don’t read further.
Ah ha! You are reading further, so you DO want to spend your money?
Now I am going to recommend a very good coral so that when you go to your local fish store you can tell the store person there to see if they carry this specific type of coral. The coral is called: fake plastic coral. HAHA. Alright I am seriously just trying to be funny.
Upon arriving at your local fish store, you might get out of your car and stride inside to the fish section. You are not alone of course, there are others here. People that keep freshwater aquariums. Gasp! Didn’t know that they existed anymore did you? And I bet you won’t be willing to say that YOU were once one of them either. You’ve converted now, you’ve seen the light. In fact you have as your looking over the freshwater aquariums you notice saltwater heaven: Hundreds upon hundreds of saltwater corals glowing and gleaming from the intense lighting of Metal halides.
As your nose is as close to the glass as you can get without in fact being inside the tank your eyes are drawn to that one coral. That one that you can’t live without, the one that will complete your collection you tell your wife. Who sadly made the mistake of going with you on the trip, but then realizes that the coral you are looking at is the same price of that new purse that she wanted. You told her no last night. It is too expensive you say. However as your realizing that had you said yes you most likely would be able to get even MORE corals today. But you didn’t. You dummy.
This is a small example of how a coral alone can cost more than double, factoring in bribing your mate. So in recap, fake plastic coral is in fact cheaper and will allow you to fill your gas tank up, and prevent you from having to buy expensive bribing gifts such as purses.
In other news, I will be discussing some new corals I ordered for my aquarium in the next few days. So does anyone know of some good deals on purses right now?
