Recent road trip to Star Ridge Aquatics

[redsoxbill]

I recently visited a new store in the area, and wanted to give my opinion of the experience. The store I visited was Star Ridge Aquatics in Carthage, NC. First let me say, that they specialize in pond plants and koi’s, and they also have several greenhouses full of plants and holding tanks. But to my surprise, Joe the owner of the family run business, stopped what he was doing, and showed me his saltwater area. He had maybe 12 -15 tanks, and two large black vats of corals that were both aqua cultured and shipped by wholesalers. The corals were great, and matched the selection that I have seen at many of the stores in the RDU area. The two vats were lighted with 250W metal halide and lumen reflectors, and was the most intense lighting I have seen on a tank. He had many colonies, and also had made several frags of some of the rarer varies of corals. He had frags of chalices, favia, pokerchip montipora, acans, duncans, firecracker duncans, and the largest cinnamon palythoa I had ever seen. Unfortunately I did not being a lot of cash (did not want to run up my credit card), and only got a frag of the cinnamon palythoa with 5 heads for $20.00. I also asked about several prices and they seemed very comparable and to the stores in the RDU area.
I was especially taken by the price of the Firecracker Duncan of $20 to $28 per head depending on head size, and he had several single, double head frags available. Needless to say, I will be going back there as my travels take me through that area.
Their website does not have any info for the corals as of yet, but I encourage him to provide some pictures to the forum for all to see. His website is: Starridgeaquatics.com from there you can get directions to the store. Also, make sure you check the store hours.
I would encourage all of you to take a day trip to this store, and check them out. That is my two cents worth anyway, and please feel free to add your comments to this topic.

Thanks,
Bill Forster