When I got home, I set up a quarantine tank to put my raffle-won Tongan purple mushroom (and "brown star polyps" and "pink birds nest") into!
Actually, I already had a 10g quarantine tank, but it was covered with algae, so I took my spare 10g (since the club didn't want it for the raffle!!) and set it up that day, so it was basically like setting up a new qt tank. It didn't take long at all, the longest part was making water-change water for the main tank so I could nab 10g of ripe water for the qt. If you have the tank, heater and HOB filter and can make salt water quickly, setting up the qt is quick, so there is no excuses!
It's now up and running (10g tank with ripe water in it, 3 frags, a HOB running carbon, an AquaC remora and a 70W MH)... I didn't have any dip chems on hand, but will order some online (I popped over to Atlantis after the meeting and didn't see any, but didn't want to bug them either since they were still dealing with a wet carpet!)
Bottom line is that aside from making salt water, you can get the tank up and running fast if you have the equipment sitting around.
Good meeting! I just wanted to post to say that I actually applied most of the principles taught there on coral frags that I swapped/won there! Soo...for all the people that don't show up ... you should go!
V