Buying coral online?

I've ordered from LiveAquaria a couple of times with excellent results. They do offer free overnight shipping on live orders over a certain amount, and their packaging is second to none.

One major pro to ordering online is that you save a lot of time and gas trying to find a certain coral/fish/whatever. Just because it's not rare doesn't always mean your LFS can keep it in stock.

 

I have bought from quite a few places online, no LFS have good coral around here imo and even with shipping the price is less than the local stores and they don't even have an overnight guarantee, the two LFS here (Des Moines) will sometimes take livestock back if there are problems like an aggressive fish, but you don't even get store credit so there isn't much reason to buy from them.

After buying from quite a few places online and on ebay my best advice would be look for the guarantee, live arrival isn't enough for coral. I have had shipments that for whatever reason don't arrive in good shape. While if the coral arrives totally dead you can get money back, but most of the time it takes a day or two to really tell and by then you are out of luck. I won't buy from a place that doesn't have a 7 day policy at least. I had a few chalice that arrived with 50 degree water temp, because the skeleton wasn't showing there was no refund and in 48hr they were totally dead and no refund despite my pics showing water temp and brown dead coral.

I love liveaquaria. Their divers den is fantastic, you can see vids on their site. Most of the stock is WYSIWYG but they also have frags and you can see the parent stock. They have 14 day policy on everything and 30 days(!!) on their aquacultured stock. I just got some SPS from there and they look great. Cultured in reef crystals (what I use) so acclimation is easier and the packaging is in several bags with cut harder plastic halves to protect the frag and styrofoam on the frag base to keep it from getting smashed on the sides.

Local clubs are the best imo. Iowa has a great reef club with frag fests and other members offering items during the year.