Highway 90 in Mississippi in the 1950s up through the 1970s. The tourist shops left over from an earlier era. But saltwater hobbyists in the 1970s knew one thing: the decorative coral skeletons then-popular as marine aquarium decorations could be had at bargain prices if you were willing to haggle and buy several.
Joyce's was one such outfit. Piles of conch shells out front were a kind of trademark of these places. The tourists would sort through them to find an unbroken one, and happily turn over $5 for it.
Aquarists, however, knew those shells were possible nuclear bombs in fish tanks. All matter of organics left dried up deep inside them were just waiting to resume decomposition once back in seawater.
Marine fish keepers knew the good stuff was inside the store. Coral skeletons like staghorn, catspaw and others were pre-bleached and almost aquarium-ready. If they still had a hint of the aroma of Clorox, a soak in freshwater with a generous dose of dechlorinator was usually all you needed to make them ready to go.
We'd arrange them in our tanks, stacked in what we assumed were "natural" configurations, often on top of lava rocks with holes drilled in them. Then we'd crowd as many Gro-Lux or Vita-Lite fluorescents as would fit the top of the tank until all that white, bleached out coral was hidden beneath a lush coat of hairy green algae. How far we've come since then...