[Myka]

Someone just asked me the same thing in PM, here's what I replied:

The Purple Seahorse has pails of Instant Ocean salt for $50 (sometimes on sale for as low as $40), so that's a good price and where I buy my salt.

I buy my corals from either Pet City or Reef Keepers. Reef Keepers tends to have the fairest prices and best selection. Reef Keepers prices their corals individually and are generally rather quite well priced. They are the most knowledgable people to talk to. Reef Keepers is the only place you can find SPS, but they don't have SPS often. They sometimes have Turbo and Astraea snails, and the occasional anemone. Reef Keepers has odd hours, and sometimes they are closed on Saturday without warning, so I always call before I drive over there since technically I live in Westbank, and that's a long drive just to see the "Open" sign off...rrr that's annoying.

Pet City prices almost all their corals at $60, and they can't always identify them for you. I know my corals, so this doesn't bother me. So I guess you have to kind of know your corals, and what they are worth, but you can get some good deals on really nice corals. They get some nice anemones as well. I have bought the majority of my corals at Pet City. They have some clams in right now.

I don't buy anything from Total Pet or Petcetera the latter of which just quit running their salt tanks (for the better!). Total Pet always has ich...like ALWAYS. The only corals you'll find there are leathers and mushrooms usually, and they look like crap. Oh wait, I do buy snails from Total Pet as they seem to be the only ones in town that carry Nassarius and Cerith snails.

I haven't found anywhere locally to buy Hermits.