Experience between selling by shipping and local pick up

[ilikefish69]

I am finally getting my 125 gallon tank "full" ish, to the point where some of the coral has taken up as much real estate as I'd want. Albeit it is not full, but I don't want the entire rockwork to be covered in the 15-20 types of zoa frags and fast encrusting corals I have. The spawns and cuts of the coral that has been kicked out is sitting on small rocks in the sand bed, while I try and figure out what to do with them.

For hobbyists (like a dude who has a tank in a basement) , what is the comparison between selling corals with shipping vs. selling without shipping? I mean I understand the concept don't get me wrong, but what are some pros & cons to each scenario that I may not think of or realize until I am elbows deep in it?

I am leaning more towards NOT shipping. I have had both coral and fish shipped to me, and everything has arrived alive. I even had a 7" kole tang shipped from Missouri to Indiana over the course of about 30 hours. It was in rough shape but I did end up saving it and it is happy now for some time.

Thanks for the help and responses. If only I had enough room for about 3 more fish tanks

 

[vetteguy53081]

I am finally getting my 125 gallon tank "full" ish, to the point where some of the coral has taken up as much real estate as I'd want. Albeit it is not full, but I don't want the entire rockwork to be covered in the 15-20 types of zoa frags and fast encrusting corals I have. The spawns and cuts of the coral that has been kicked out is sitting on small rocks in the sand bed, while I try and figure out what to do with them.

For hobbyists (like a dude who has a tank in a basement) , what is the comparison between selling corals with shipping vs. selling without shipping? I mean I understand the concept don't get me wrong, but what are some pros & cons to each scenario that I may not think of or realize until I am elbows deep in it?

I am leaning more towards NOT shipping. I have had both coral and fish shipped to me, and everything has arrived alive. I even had a 7" kole tang shipped from Missouri to Indiana over the course of about 30 hours. It was in rough shape but I did end up saving it and it is happy now for some time.

Thanks for the help and responses. If only I had enough room for about 3 more fish tanks

Shipping obviously inherits stress, and expense plus requirement for proper packing. For local which I buy often, you see it in person, select what you like and place in your own container and head home reducing the time out of light and water not to mention ability to make a package price and even haggle a little

 

[ilikefish69]

Shipping obviously inherits stress, and expense plus requirement for proper packing. For local which I buy often, you see it in person, select what you like and place in your own container and head home reducing the time out of light and water not to mention ability to make a package price and even haggle a little

I am leaning more towards NOT shipping after reading up on a few old threads on how other people ship coral. It is cool though how there are 5/10/20/40 hour heat packs, I always wondered how that worked when I got stuff shipped to me.

I think a few FB marketplace posts should get me some extra $$$ , I need some hannas in a bad way.

Best case scenario I can get ahold of the LFS and see if they do any shipping and we could split the profit. They unfortunately do not offer very good rates of trade ins, an RBTA split they were offering $5 store credit ... not a good sign.