Chop Shops :(

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Epic Aquaculture

Epic Aquaculture

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People see pretty colours, they buy stuff, they haven't researched correctly and their tanks are completely unsuitable, either not mature, or they do not have the right equipment, or know how to use what they do have.
99.999999% of the time, a coral dies due to the person, not the coral.

Granted, I would never buy a true "chop shop", but again this is the persons fault.

People will sell their own mothers if they could make enough money, so lets not be pointing the finger at the vendors, at least entirely, the issue in the vast majority of cases is the people.

This is probably one of the most difficult, expensive and frustrating hobbies known to man, yet people think they can just throw sticks in a tank and it's all going to be fine. Nope!
I disagree. I feel that the good companies behave ethically and want their customers to be successful. It is much easier to keep customers than to find new ones.

I do agree that research, knowledge, and experience are keys to success, and with these people should be learning that chops shops are not going to be a good way to achieve success with SPS.
 

Brew12

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People see pretty colours, they buy stuff, they haven't researched correctly and their tanks are completely unsuitable, either not mature, or they do not have the right equipment, or know how to use what they do have.
99.999999% of the time, a coral dies due to the person, not the coral.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with this. I know several nationally respected coral vendors that routinely buy maricultured and wild coral and they have much less than an 80% success rate. Some die fairly quickly, others refuse to grow and waste away after a year or more. Many of the others never develop colors that make them marketable. I've been told that less than 10% of what they bring in makes it to market.

With that said, I have little doubts that this is your experience. Having recently been part of the EU, there were fairly tight regulations on the sale of fish and coral in regards to their health in the UK. We don't have those protections in the US. There are no laws preventing selling a sick or dying fish, or about mandating refunds if a coral/fish die. I know a case where a vendor purchased space at a local coral show and had the maricultured coral shipped to his hotel near the show. He cut them into frags as he transferred them from the shipping container into a bucket to take to his booth. He was planning on selling the frags for $10 each but was kicked out of the show when this was reported. We found out that at past shows he would toss whatever coral didn't sell by the end of the day.

Now that is the extreme of a chop shop, but it's something we deal with here in the US that is, by my understanding, much more unlikely in Europe.
 

lemonade

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I'm going to respectfully disagree with this. I know several nationally respected coral vendors that routinely buy maricultured and wild coral and they have much less than an 80% success rate. Some die fairly quickly, others refuse to grow and waste away after a year or more. Many of the others never develop colors that make them marketable. I've been told that less than 10% of what they bring in makes it to market.
Frag survival is much different than colonies, though. I would agree the success rate is lower for a vendor trying to acclimate a shipment of colonies. However, chop shops are not selling colonies and the frag survival off those colonies is much higher imo.
 

ReefPig

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I'm going to respectfully disagree with this. I know several nationally respected coral vendors that routinely buy maricultured and wild coral and they have much less than an 80% success rate. Some die fairly quickly, others refuse to grow and waste away after a year or more. Many of the others never develop colors that make them marketable. I've been told that less than 10% of what they bring in makes it to market.

With that said, I have little doubts that this is your experience. Having recently been part of the EU, there were fairly tight regulations on the sale of fish and coral in regards to their health in the UK. We don't have those protections in the US. There are no laws preventing selling a sick or dying fish, or about mandating refunds if a coral/fish die. I know a case where a vendor purchased space at a local coral show and had the maricultured coral shipped to his hotel near the show. He cut them into frags as he transferred them from the shipping container into a bucket to take to his booth. He was planning on selling the frags for $10 each but was kicked out of the show when this was reported. We found out that at past shows he would toss whatever coral didn't sell by the end of the day.

Now that is the extreme of a chop shop, but it's something we deal with here in the US that is, by my understanding, much more unlikely in Europe.

That’s really terrible and shocking.
You're right, I’ve not seen that in EU, tonnes of frags, yes, but never true chop shop.

Sadly with the UK leaving EU, our ability to buy corals has just vastly reduced. At least 50% of my coral purchases were from Germany, Fauna Marin and the likes.
EU may as well be US for us now, it’s all covered by CITES, so not worth thinking about for a small handful of corals.

We desperately need more farms in the UK.
 

AZMSGT

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My experience in the short year and a half I've been doing this. Corals that have been in the hobby a long time are much more hardy and can survive allot of reefing whoops. Walt Disney, Ora Red Planet.. etc. These corals are tough and someone like me can put them in their tank and watch them grow.

Now would I trust myself with a $100 piece of brand new never been in a tank before coral.. Probably not. But if I got a $20-30 piece I might be willing to try it. There is a dollar point where I would try to grow a coral that is new to the market.

What's bad is when someplace chop up these new indo hammers, torches and acros and charge a premium price of $400+ Yea, that really hurts to watch a torch melt and there is nothing you can do to stop it. So hack shops can keep there pieces and I'll keep getting quality ready for my tank items.

Thanks but I prefer a success over a failure any day of the week.

These are two very happy aquacultured corals in my system

coral-3082.jpg

coral-3090.jpg
 

adrianr514

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Nope, I’m allowed to have an opinion even if you disagree.

last I checked we are in the USA!
I think we found the fudd.

How are they supposed to agree or disagree if you don’t care to give an explanation as to why you feel that way.

That’s not how it works.
 
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Frag survival is much different than colonies, though. I would agree the success rate is lower for a vendor trying to acclimate a shipment of colonies. However, chop shops are not selling colonies and the frag survival off those colonies is much higher imo.
That's not what my original post is against. Stores are selling mari and wild colonies as soon as they come in. Some are selling them before they have even arrived! They are also chopping them up the day they arrive and selling those frags. I know this for an absolute fact, and that is what I am speaking out against.
 
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