“Can I legally bring corals with me on a plane?” is one of the most frequent question asked by hobbyists who are planning to transport live corals across the United States. As it turns out, I found an answer to that question when I visited the Building an Obsession (BaO) booth at MACNA 2018 in Las Vegas.

Their latest product, which they call Personal Transport, is a TSA approved, leak-proof frag transport container with a built-in, removable frag rack. Building an Obsession is known for their precise, vendor oriented frag rack transport systems and many elements of these commercial frag racks have been adapted into a system build with the individual reefer in mind.

Personal Transport has a removable frag rack tray, complete with a centrally mounted handle for easy removal. Each of the 12 holes in the black acrylic, disk-shaped rack has a built-in locking mechanism, which holds frag plugs in a tight grip, preventing them from getting loose and bouncing around the container. That mechanism is very well designed, so much so that you can have the frags mounted on the disk upside down and they will still stay in place! There are even three “feet” on the frag disk that lifts it off the surface, should you want to place the entire frag rack in the tank and leave the corals there to grow. That feature makes Personal Transport an excellent dipping station as well.

Most of all, Personal Transport meets all requirements to be TSA compliant- it holds less than 3.5 oz of water (2.8oz), it has a removable, sealed lid, and it’s transparent (plus some other TSA rules it meets). BaO ships every Personal Transport container with a printout of the TSA paperwork you need should you have any issues with an agent at the security screening.

There is a second product in BaO’s line I was not aware of, and it’s their modular magnetic frag rack system called Hive.  It consists of two distinctive parts- a magnetic bracket and interchangeable frag racks. Everything about this frag rack is modular in nature- not only you can swap the frag rack plates to achieve multiple different combinations of sizes, colors, locking mechanism strength, and hole sizes, but the magnetic rack itself is designed to be customizable.

The magnetic hubs have leak-proof gaskets and can be accessed by the user so that the core magnet can be swapped out. Five different core magnet sizes are available, which allows Hive to be used on a glass from less than ½” to up to 1” in thickness.

And by the way, these racks just look great in the tank.

The two products I wrote about in this article represent only a small fraction of what Building an Obsession offers. Check them out by visiting https://buildinganobsession.com

Stay tuned for more MACNA news and as always, thank you for reading!

GALLERY