NYC Aquarium visit followup
Ok, so I just wanted to update this thread after my trip. I went to
Coral Theory on Sunday and really enjoyed myself there! It was as I imagined, a small industrial type garage with two large frag tanks, chock full of really nice frags and great prices. I liked the open and raw feeling of the place - somehow it just works. The sales guy (sorry man I forgot your name!) and Vince were really helpful, knowledgeable, relaxed and accommodating, which in my experience, is very un-NYC like.
They are also in or very close to the well looked after Jewish district so I felt very safe, which may sound lame to someone that lives in NYC, but we country folk think about this stuff (I was robbed/pick pocketed in NYC once).
Anyway, I had a great time at Coral Theory and I was impressed with the selection and quantity of frags. I'll definitely be buying from them again, and I wouldn't think twice about ordering from them online - they have an awesome shipping and packaging process. They packed my stuff for my long trip home and the next day in my tank everything is open and happy. They also had some nice fish, but I cant fit any more, so I didnt look too closely.
I exercised restraint and told myself to save money and room in my tank for my next visit which was to
Manhattan Aquarium, but I wish I hadnt and spent more at Coral Theory! I really dont make it a habit of bad mouthing places, but I want to let others know that IMO there is a
HUGE discrepancy between the reputation MA has here and on other forums vs what I saw in the store.
Upon entry, you are greeted with quite a smelly waft of decaying something.. which is always a bad sign at a fish store I suppose. The store is smaller than I imagined - I saw a video on youtube that made it look huge - probably my fault there. There are several long thin tanks with frags, and there are quite a few frags in there, but they are quite hard to see. There was a single looking glass for all of the tanks, and it had a leak so it was annoying to look closely at frags.
What I could see was mostly brown looking and not happy. I noticed a LOT of bubble and hair algae, especially in one of the tanks which always is a sign of unkept and uncared for tanks. A worked commented that they lost their refugium recently, which felt like a bit of a lie because that growth looked pretty old and situated to me. I also saw a large dead tang in one tank, which was sad. There was one side tank that had some nice coral in it on its own fuge and it looked decent, but the prices were really high.
For the stuff that they did have that was nice, a few ricordea and some larger corals I found the prices not great, just consistent with what I pay here at a LFS, if not a little more. I had to ask for prices for most things and you get the feeling they sort of make it up. I've read many posts about how great the prices are but the only awesome priced frags I saw were of the zoas and I didnt see any cool ones really. There was one nice zoa that tempted me but its plug was covered in nuisance algae so I skipped it. My overall reaction to the two discounted areas were that they were mostly brown and not very engaging.
I write this message not because I want to hurt their business but I want to let others know that MA totally did not live up to the online hype that I read about, which in my opinion is important to do in a forum like this. I spent days planning and researching and narrowing down what stores to visit in the NYC area and always someone chimed in first and said go to MA, so it was a sure bet I'd go there. I actually wondered if the people that recommended it ever get out of Manhattan to shop, maybe its just ignorance and they dont know better?! I spent a lot of money and time/effort to plan my trip into NYC specifically to go there and I ended up leaving without buying anything, and trust me I was ready to drop some cash. I think overall the store was quite average IMO. Perhaps at one time it was
tops, but it is not now. I'd have to give that hat tip to Coral Theory.
I think if I head that way again, I'll stop at Greenwich, which I hear great things about, and of course Coral Theory. Keep up the good work and low prices guys!
