How do you sell your coral?

[ReefBeta]

I think price and demand play a big part. We tend to sell sps in the price listed on online store. Those prices are generally pretty high and only a handful across the country are willing to pay that price. Chance for those exists in your local area is slim. Also counting in the chance that those don't have what you offer already.

Also it's always true that the lower end stuff are more popular than higher end stuff. Sps is top end of the hobby, both in price and in difficulty. So it's only normal to have less people in the sps game than lps and softy.

The last thing is, sps are probably the easiest to frag out from a display tank. Just think about fragging zoa or acan off your display rockwork. It's impractical for many. Cutting a stick on the other hand is so easy. Sps also grow quite dang fast once established. So basically one mature colony in one reefer's tank can easily supply the whole local market at the typical retail price.

I know when I'm looking in my local market, I'm looking for good deal. If it's close to typical online price, I usually skip. If you really want to sell the frags, try half the price. I bet you will get a lot more interests. That's how free market suppose to work anyway. Low demand should drive down prices.

 

[ReefBeta]

Honestly both of these sellers are pricing 50% and 30% of market respectively. If they shipped they could each get around 100$ per frag on the wd. I wish similar deals were available in Seattle but most sellers here want 80% of retail and the better ones with highly desirable frags and food pictures get it. At some point you start talking real money and it’s probably worth the pucker factor.

I'm also in Seattle area. There are so few that offers sps. None of the LFS specialized in sps either. I guess the demand is not too high here.

 

[Fishingandreefing]

We sell a ton of coral. With 7 reefs running there is always trimming to be done. I also find the greed in the hobby to be a bit of an issue. It is hard for people (especially youngsters) to have a nice reef without breaking the bank. When we decided to sell our frags, our biggest hurdles were:
- Most every other reefer is 30+ minutes away from our house
- I cannot ever seem to get good pictures
- I dont want to ship
So we decided to sell frags cheap - real cheap
I was really surprised at the sheer number of frags that we are able to sell. A lot of people will come and buy 10-20 frags at a time to get their tanks set up. Our single sale record is 36 frags. Some drive almost 2 hours to get here and all leave happy. We are happy to trade frags and have traded for some really nice pieces. We have met a bunch of really nice reefers and we are surely knocking the price of corals down in our area.

Cheers! Mark

You’re a business man! I am type of guy will buy a bunch and always bought way more than i intended to when the price is too good to pass. Just like my local fish stores, most of them sit on the corals and fish, hardly going on sale. But a couple of stores have sales pretty often and re stock them within a week because they have the fund and room. As a consumer, who wants to go to a store knowing that they got the same thing over and over again at “their” asking price.

 

[MSB123]

We will leave the porch light on for you!
But you know, for us this is a hobby. It is not a business. I don't think it should not be about greed! It should be about sharing these beauties that the ocean provides. The little bit of money we get (we trade a lot of corals too) pays for supplies/electricity and nicer corals to make available.
I have a 16 year old son and he loves to frag corals. He puts his phone away drops his guard and we talk for hours. He helps package corals up and gets a big chunk of the sales.
I have a bit of OCD and need to be always doing something. This hobby works for me. With 6 tanks packed to the limits with coral, there is always maint. to be done and if you keep up on the maint. you can produce frags pretty fast.
Cheers! Mark

Im in Socal. Do you ship? I am also 16 and am trying to stock up for a new build, without spending $$$$ on frags.

 

[ruskimax]

Get yourself a GoDaddy page and some packing peanuts, local sales are great for staying in touch w the community but like pointed out above : if you want top dollar u need to ask for top dollar from the largest group of potential customers possible.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

The customer pays shipping so that shouldn't concern you too much. At those prices (both of you) I believe most people would be more than willing to pay shipping for multiple frags. The only problem is the cost of shipping supplies. So will you make any money after paying for those?

Honestly at those prices shipping won’t be an issue

 

[Shooter6]

This is what I posted to my local forum recently to give you an idea of my prices. Plus, I offer 20% off these prices fairly often. Please don’t consider this a for sale posting, I’m just trying to get an idea if I’m doing something wrong. You can see almost all of these on my build thread.


Two Guys Corals (TGC)Pink Caddy- $40

TGC - Pearly Gates - $50

Battlecorals (BC) Spainbow - $35

Bubblegum Digi - $20

Forest fire digi - $20

Tubbs Mystic Blue Stag - $35

Purple stylo - $20

No name red table (huge frag) - $30

No name red or pink acros $30

No Name Mille - $30

BC Reef Ready Grape Juice - $30

Windy City Reefs Rainbow - $75

Route 66 Merlin’s Staff - $150

Aquaman Monti -$25

Green Psamacora $20

Pale blue digi - $20

Frogspawn - $5 per head

WD - $60

BC Nilbog Resident - $35

Reef Raft Event Horizon -$60

BC Leprechaun in Purgatory - $35

BC unknown purple thingy - $40

BC Xmas - $35

BC Thermans Rainbow -$35

CRT Peachy Delight Millie - $60

Merlins staff and event horizon shipped to san antonio texas 78233 ??

 

[Shooter6]

Shipping is easy. Just buy sone of the small insulated boxes. Small bags like your lfs uses. Double bag each peice with about 1/2 cup of water, and just a little air. Put the frags and packing peanuts in the container so nothing can move around. Depending on weather you may need an ice pack or heat pack. Which will require special packing. Then tape the styrofoam container lifd on completely sealing it . Ace it inside the shipping box. Tape it up completely on all edges.
Label it live animals on all sides.
Label it, then take it to the local fedex hub before 8pm. Pay overnight guarantee by 10am. Have stanfard doa agreement and follow it.

 

[McPuff]

I agree with Mark. I have been selling frags for $10 each (sometimes less or free depending on species) and it's amazing how much faster everything sells. When you consider your time, selling for cheap gives you more money in a faster amount of time. It also helps to clear up space which is usually more important for me since I don't like to dedicate much space to frags.

 

[AquariumSpecialtyMatt]

.

 

[hyprc]

Get yourself a GoDaddy page and some packing peanuts, local sales are great for staying in touch w the community but like pointed out above : if you want top dollar u need to ask for top dollar from the largest group of potential customers possible.

Ever checked out BlueHost? Or any other hosting service for that matter? Wouldn't recommend GoDaddy to my worst enemy

 

[ruskimax]

Ever checked out BlueHost? Or any other hosting service for that matter? Wouldn't recommend GoDaddy to my worst enemy

I just meant any merchant web site to get his stuff out there. I only use the computer for 2 things, one is for reefing forums. The other is, well, not reefing forums lol.

 

[GrumpyAlison]

Been lurking on the rest of the responses because I’m also curious about selling corals, but o had 2 thoughts.

And I’m not sure if this helps at all, but I personally don’t mind buying without wysiwyg pics, but if that’s the case I like seeing pics of the rack of corals on it with a representative sample of the frags (or the mother colony, but I prefer frag pics). I’ve bought a supposedly-fancier shroom without a whsiwyg pic (just a pic of one mushroom) thinking it’d be similar to the one in the pic but the one I got looked barely anything like the pic and I was kind of salty (a hear and a half later and it’s still basically the same, just bigger, but separate issue...).

I think it also comes down a bit to the piece itself, but if it’s somethong really generic like a watermelon shroom or a sunset monti, I’ll just pick up a frag from whatever pic because they’re kind of idiot proof and all look the same. For something fancier like a bounce mushroom, something I’m dropping lots of money for or anything one-offs without a known name (sunset monti, oh bounce, etc; stuff like “here’s a random mushroom that looks cool and stared bouncing” or “idk what this is but it’s cool??”) I like wysiwyg pics.

I feel like the pack selection is also good to entice people into spending more to justify shipping or perhaps setting a shipping limit where it’s discounted or free after a certain limit. I also know a few local reefing businesses who have cheaper (10 vs 40) shipping for states near them, which means I buy from them without considering shipping since 10 isn’t bad at all, though I’m sure they do some crazy volume to justify that.

I’d also love to see a pic of your tank! Im mostly a softie person, but I have a thing for frag tanks and yours sounds cool XD

Hope that was somewhat useful

 

[sawdonkey]

Seems to me we are "derailing" Sawdonkey's thread - sorry!

No worries, carry on. Ive gotten plenty of answers to my question.

Regarding setting some prices really low, I’m not against doing that. I usually go a slightly different route, I set my prices at a reasonable level and arrange a deal, then when people come for pickup, I send the home with twice as many frags than they came and paid for. But your method probably works better to get people in the door in the first place. Plus, with corals like Tubbs Mystic Blue, I can cut about 5 frags a week, so who cares.

I worry about setting prices really low because I really don’t want to deal with arranging pickups and making time in my schedule for a $15 transaction.

 

[sawdonkey]

Let's see some colonies

I asked a similar question in my local forum and one thing I forgot to mention here is that I live in downtown Chicago. Getting a suburbanite to drive downtown and deal with traffic and parking is a no go for a lot of people. I was surprised how many people said that.

Anyway, here are some photos:

 

[DEWreefing]

I asked a similar question in my local forum and one thing I forgot to mention here is that I live in downtown Chicago. Getting a suburbanite to drive downtown and deal with traffic and parking is a no go for a lot of people. I was surprised how many people said that.

Anyway, here are some photos:

Awesome looking coral still have a lot of room to grow.

 

[sawdonkey]

Awesome looking coral still have a lot of room to grow.

thanks. That full-ish tank shot is only about 1/3 of my tank and that photo is 3 or so months old. It’s much more cramped now. I need to shoot some full tank shots soon.

this is my previous build....before my neighbor above me decided to have a fire and ruin my condo/aquarium.

 

[hotdrop]

FYI there is a whole thread here on shipping services. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-many-of-you-have-tried-ship-your-aquatics.230288/page-2

 

[Amado]

If you don’t want to ship. You can do counter to counter at the airport. It’s a flat fee and the corals fish are not stressed. You drive to your local airport with a cooler full of fish or corals.
They put it on a plane and the other party drives to the airport to pick it up.

I had a veterinarian in Hawaii that was breeding discus (fresh water fish)
And he had no one on the island to sell them too so I will buy boxes full and grow them out in NJ

 

[seahorsemaster]

Wow, thanks for the heads up on this. I priced overnight priority from Chicago to LA and it reduces the price from about $120 to $50. That’s pretty good. Have you used it?

Plus, I get free insulated packaging because my wife is a microbiologist and they get specimen boxes almost daily. Now....if I could just get coral to survive shipping!

I sell locally using Craigslist. Sometimes get customers coming from other states. Generally find shipping costs would be prohibitive although have sold and shipped seahorses on eBay.