Saltwater retailers?

I recently started up my second attempt at a reef tank and everything has been fantastic so far. The only thing I'm having problems with is finding good places to buy corals, fish and other supplies. I've been spending a lot of time driving to and from Forest Lake Pets and World of Fish. I was wondering if there are any other places a little closer to home or if there are any online retailers that you guys would recommend.

I'm not a reefer, but I visit Saltwater Empire in Bloomington sometimes and consider making the leap. Nice staff, and from my experience visiting all of the other metro fish stores, they have reasonable prices. They have a large selection of corals and different sized frags, from $17 on the lower, smaller end to much more for bigger frags/rarer corals. Fish prices are much better than WOF.

Not sure where home is but, New Wave Aquaria in Plymouth has the best livestock around.
The shop is small but filled with the best they can find, always worth the trip.
14100 23rd Ave N Suite B

You should also consider joining the Twin Cities Marine Aquarium Society reef forum. Great resource.

I'd heartily endorse any of the places previously mentioned. I'd also ad the the minnetonka petco (and only the minnetonka locale) is very good. The fish dept manager is an avid reefer and knows his stuff better than most.

I'd also strongly suggest joining tcmas.

Since these guys have the local stuff covered I'll provide the online options.

I've purchased several things online from www.liveaquara.com. My most prized possession from them was a Purple Long tentacle anemone. Beautiful. Shipped well, and arrived in excellent condition. I found it on the Divers Den section on live aquaria. http://www.liveaquaria.com/diversden/index.cfm

I've also bought from www.worldwidecorals.com. Prices are not cheap, but they have some pretty nice stuff and everything there is WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I bought a wellso brain from them a handful of years ago and it was really nice. Again, well shipped and in great condition.

I have bought from www.coralprops.com as well. Definitely the best prices around that I have seen, but there stuff is not the 'latest and greatest' type stuff. You won't find 300$ acans or 50$ per polyp zoas here, but they have some decent stuff at really fair prices. If you are starting up a new tank this is a good site to get a handful of corals at a good price to get things going.

The best way to get corals though bar none is to join a club. You will often find experienced, gracious members who love helping out newbies with great advice and cheap frags (sometimes even free).

Minnetonka petco and new wave are both great. What really sucks about tcmas is that just joining the site doesn't give you full acsess to the site.

MplsGuy wrote:

I visit Saltwater Empire in Bloomington....they have reasonable prices.

I disagree. I find them to have very high prices. Very nice and knowledgeable but extremely high prices compared to other LFS.

Here ya go: go nuts
http://mrcoral.com/go/index.php/10-section.html

I would avoid Mr Coral. My opinion of course, but I have ordered from him in the past. Much of his orders are not WYSIWYG - and he sells some pretty freshly cut corals. I have pics of a few acans he sold me - very very iffy condition. But then again, his prices are on the low end.

Just be aware that depending on what you order - especially if it's a frag - it might be pretty touch and go for a while, and it also might be dead in a week. Not a place I'd recommend to a beginner IMO.

I'm a newbie to this forum and still consider myself a newbie to Saltwater tanks (only been doing it for about 5 years now). I would also second Saltwater Empire. Only been there once so far just recently, but the salesguy Fritz was super nice, fairly knowledgeable and showed me around the whole store, including the back room where all the filtration units were etc... Literally it felt like no place in the store was off limits besides behind the sales counter. They quarantine and medicate their fish for about 5-6 days (I believe) and have a fairly good selection of Saltwater fish. From visiting and comparing to other local fish stores their prices on fish seemed fairly reasonable and average also being clearly marked on most everything in all the tanks. Best of all the whole store was dedicated to Saltwater, not many of those about. I will be going back soon.
World of Fish is also pretty nice but they are less open space making it feel somewhat claustrophobic. Their prices seem a little more expensive but they also had a fairly decent selection of Saltwater fish and corals as well as a significant assortment of other freshwater fish.
Wish either one was closer as I'm on the east side of the metro so my two close spots are Atlas pets in Stillwater who has about 9 40 gallon saltwater tanks and a small assortment of fish and Forest Lake Pets. Overall an ok store but not the best selection for saltwater fish. The staff working the back fish room are fairly knowledgeable and willing to talk when they aren't too busy.

Saltwater Empire is closed. Out of business!