I got a rant to put out there, so fair warning but I'm open to hearing opinions

[Epic Aquaculture]

Yep I saw this and I certainly saw value, but I'm also not out to say it's wrong for people to buy cool corals to resell. That's your business model. But you would think a proposed high tier vendor like BSA knows better than to tarnish their reputation over a quick buck.

I don't know Saw, it just felt weird seeing someone touting as a ultra premium brand doing that. If you're gonna do it, drop the image and be humble and honest instead of fleecing people.

You could charge thousands or hundreds for your frags, and you do, but at least you have the decency as a vendor to back it up with a photo of the grow out or mother colony.

Doesn't it rub you the wrong way when someone is charging a premium for nothing besides marketing behind their brand? You tout the best corals in the universe, but you also don't charge insane prices. You could, but you don't. There's a point where if people want to charge that for their corals, you could probably all band together and do that, and I won't complain because businesses are businesses, but as far as anyone understands, you try your best to run your business and you feel like you are priced for the market.

It should upset you that you basically have a hobbyist collector show up, buy people out, and then make up names and charge 4 times what you do for the same product you offer. I understand that you made your money if they buy you out, but understand that time in the market beats timing the market. In other words, if nobody had sold anything to BSA they would have been there with a few 10 gallon tanks and their thumbs up their butt all weekend, which is how it should be because at $600/frag for a discosoma they should be able to bring their own coral just like everyone else.

A minimum inventory of default stock would be a nice idea to prevent this sort of market abuse at future events.

I was addressing the poster who said there are no $10 frags. From an ethical standpoint I agree with what you are saying. It's not something I would ever do, but I specialize in aquacultured corals so it's very important to me that I grow them, know the lineage, and charge reasonable prices. I can't really address what other vendors do, but honesty is always the best policy. I do also appreciate the kind words, so thank you very much.

 

[murraycamp1]

Hobbyists need to become the solution to these high prices and stop funding these cartoon name crazy money “rare” corals.

Preach

 

[AKG]

I was addressing the poster who said there are no $10 frags. From an ethical standpoint I agree with what you are saying. It's not something I would ever do, but I specialize in aquacultured corals so it's very important to me that I grow them, know the lineage, and charge reasonable prices. I can't really address what other vendors do, but honesty is always the best policy. I do also appreciate the kind words, so thank you very much.

I get frustrated when I see normal people like you trying to run a business, and make a honest living while seeing a dishonest person sit and abuse their perfectly good name to strip people of money that I could have otherwise given to a new business. The hobby is only going to get more expensive but this behavior makes it difficult to trust vendors who are doing everything right on paper regardless of what actually happens before or after an event. I think as a reefer, that relationship is all we have sometimes beyond the coral, so it's important to maintain that image when it's already starting to become big fish in a small pond, with collections decreasing YoY.

I totally understand the fomo, but the key relationships really are hobbyists and not other vendors and preserving your coral selection from other vendors solidifies your reputation as someone able to be in the market.

It's not necessarily your responsibility to provide for other vendors and I would argue that even so, they can easily call you or email you and do business with you any other 363 days of the year.

I know full well you can do whatever you feel comfortable with, but I don't think it's extreme to say that there's a line to walk where the vendors dwindle every year and it's clear that people need to support those who can show their business model as much as reasonable when it comes to coral health.

Honestly, I'm happy to pay for extra care going into growth. I understand the rising costs of running a business, insurance, accidents... and this is a hobby for those with disposable income. I can respect that fee as a mutual hedge against disaster.

What I can't respect is the money grabbing I witnessed by someone I previously considered to be very legitimate in terms of putting the extra effort into their corals.

Naturally it feels like I am lied to but sometimes it is merely policy by omission, I can't get upset over that.

I don't know what the policy should be, but I do think it would be nice to establish some form of entity that can inspect or verify a coral vendor's standards and place them into a tech sheet everyone understands. It's okay to say it came from XYZ hobbyists tank, but I think the honesty by policy and being communicative on a sheet as far as documenting coral origins is important, even if it has been recently pulled out of the ocean.

The issue here is people will still lie, and this sort of goes into wholesalers as well...

That's a whole different can of worms for a different discussion but I think avoiding event-hour transactions is a good start to having a good separation of church and state. We all love coral. We all love supporting vendors, just stick to your guns when it comes to your company values.

It was good to see people enjoying Reefstock. I showed up in a galaxy shirt the second day and my mother loved it, having not been in the hobby almost 20 years. Thanks for being there.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

this is the same as mom and pop store refusing a sale and sending them to walmart because walmart sells it cheaper. Ok..if you dont like walmart...mom and pop store sending you to smaller mom and pop store that sells it cheaper. Either way..its all but a sure fire remedy for mom and pop to go out of business. You make money how you can.

I know this is personal because we as consumer feel directly affected...but are you going to turn away business because someone else sells something cheaper? I would put high odds that, in reality, few would.

It’s not refusing a sale if you don’t have the product. Walmart isn’t going to go buy a tv they don’t have in stock from a local store and sell it to a customer. Let’s not start with a bunch of apples to oranges talk. Be
We all know the person wanting to pay crazy money for a coral is the “problem” here. That’s why it would be fine to Gather things you need before the show. But once it’s opened to customers it’s more than a little shady to be operating in view of customers just to chase the money.

If the practice of a big name going to the little guy to just buy a coral because he knows he can sell it for double at the same show goes on, I would like to know.
I most likely won't be giving the big name my money.

If that happens after the show or happens at random times, I don't care. For me, it shouldn't happen at the shows.

Shows, for me, are where big names and little guys can stand side by side and offer what they have. Let the buyer pick where they give there money.

1) little guy might not have the proper QT the big name has.
2) little guy probably cheaper than big name.
3) buyer should know where it came from. If the big seller buys it from little guy at the show, the buyer may never know that it wasn't properly QTed.

I know this happens all the time in every aspect of life.
I just feel it shouldn't happen at a show where I paid to get in to see what everyone has, big or small. Let me decide who to give money to.

Having said all that, this hobby is getting very expensive. Most of the blame falls on us. Fancy names are driving the prices.
Common coral now has a fancy name, up the price 10 fold.

Well said. I have sold a number of pieces to vendors that asked but it was never during a trade show or frag swap and they were not local.
I bet if anyone was to do this at ANY local frag swap or local show the whole community would catch on and ban that person. I have seen numerous people get banned for reselling things back to the same community.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

I love that everyone loves collecting corals, but I saw something at Reefstock that really, really bothered me. I specific high end coral vendor was buying stuff off of other vendors in order to fleece the crowds by making up names and abusing their reputation as a high end seller in order to make money and proportedly sell things as "rare" or "unique" just because you have a really reputable brand behind you.

This is not okay and I hope you know who you are if you are reading this.

I will not be purchasing from you again and upon asking a local LFS this is not the first year they have done this so I can only believe this behavior is happening at other shows as well.

For the record, it was not Top Shelf Aquatics. They had a good selection and I got some more dragon tongue. It WAS
another nationally recognized brand.

Buying a coral at a show is one thing, but to use your reputation and good brand name to screw over hobbyists is another. I'm pretty upset about it but I just won't ever give them my money.

Not only that but they had a habit of trying to tell customers including myself, "awwww man there's some rare stuff in there" only for me to see them run up to a booth I was at later on and quickly tell a vendor "I'll take these three scolies just charge my card thanks" only to see that they later gave them weird names I'd never heard of.

Not only that, I saw them buy up a hammer coral colony labelled as hammer coral colony and proceed to then take it over, give the name of jack o lantern hammer or something, and charge basically double what the original LFS wanted.


Look, I know you want to make money, everyone there does.

But if you want to sell coral, how about checking your corals in the plane like everyone else instead of ripping off communities of hobbyists around the country.

End of rant.

This just rubbed me the wrong way. The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed. When a hobbyist asks about your corals, I expect to buy your corals, not some flatworm infested p.o.s. that you bought from the maricultured 7 for $100 area and claimed was a special coral.

Anyone who wants to know the vendor can privately pm me and come to their own conclusions, but I believe it is my duty to spread this awareness as this vendor charges a very, very healthy markup and I can confidently say that this was not consistent with their public image, at all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, if it was any other vendor I probably wouldn't be so upset about it but I think this is just plain fraud.

I should also note, I have photographic evidence of other vendors complaining about this specific vendor at past events, and lack of truthful provenance of the corals and how they were obtained.

So basically you went to a show to sell your high end corals and someone brought them £200 a piece then you seen them selling them for £1000? But re branded with a new name I'm confused by the whole statement sorry

 

[Sebastiancrab]

Don't ever go shopping in the souks in Morocco and other foreign countries where there are NO prices posted. You will get a real shock regarding buying and selling. And I should say laugh too because the salesmen are creative every which way!

 

[Spare time]

So a vendor buying a coral for $20 and then selling to someone for $200 is wrong? Wait till you realize how much fish are marked up. You know how I avoid that? I just don't buy them. As a business owner customers don't get to determine what they should pay for my services. They are more than welcome to use anyone else if they don't like my pricing. Its up to hobbyists to educated themselves so they don't get ripped off. I buy those ugly green sticks nobody wants and many of them have grown out into very colorful colonies.

The fish markup at a lot of vendors is because they have to cover shipping (which is expensie), dead fish, and food. Some fish sit in a store for quite awhile which makes turnover slow. This is one of the reasons why LFS's are not usually highly lucrative. This isn't even to mention the costs of dry goods sitting around.

 

[prodbot7]

I expect a high caliber vendor that I'm paying top dollar towards to have at least made sure the coral is good to go before selling. This isn't done in a couple of minutes/hours.

Honestly, I think this is the main reason I’d have an issue… there are (an extremely) limited few vendors who’s coral I expect to be A) aqua cultured or at least acclimated to tank conditions and B) pest/disease free… those vendors we’ve bought more expensive/delicate corals from and they have gone straight into our tank without dip/qt…. Obv I know this is still a risk however those few are also friends of my partner so I would be very surprised if they sold something after only having it for a few hours.

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

Late stage Capitalist innovation

 

[AquaDaniel]

I’ve seen some people constantly join some live sales and buy a lot every time. My guess is those people are doing similar things - snap cheap corals, raise prices and then sell. Not saying they’re not allowed to do so, but it really ruins the fun for general hobbyists and contributes to the crazy prices in this hobby.

I’ve also seen a lot of times that auction prices went higher even than the original prices on wholesales’ website, and yet people were still going crazy with the auction.

You can easily tell some corals are overpriced if you spend some time to compare prices among different vendors, not to mention how frequent the live sales are these days. And yes, people are still going crazy with over priced corals, especially those with fancy names.

Crazy sellers and crazy buyers, just a perfect match in this hobby.

 

[thatmanMIKEson]

LoL "hide the coral there's poor people around"
-someone-

I don't even let my poor friends look at my coral, not that they'd know what they are!

 

[DIYreefer]

Well, capitalism and opportunity . I find the whole “high end corals” thing silly. Yellow tangs used to be a dime a dozen, now they are High End Fish. Lol, they were just as pretty before..

While they (yellow tangs) are the same as they've always been, their availability is not. Hence the inflated prices on them. I have one that I've had for more than a decade, I paid $30 for it. If I were try to buy the same fish today, I could not afford it. Not because one today is any better or high end, simply because there aren't many available.

Same goes for *some* high end corals. Many are over priced, photo shopped, bs but some truly are worthy of the hype... and price tag. I've been in the hobby many, many years and have owned more corals than I could count (seriously) and some truly are as scarce as they are made out to be, while others are not. For example, I own or have owned every variation of bowser, wowser, CAR, CAO zoa out there and they are all for the most part, the same thing. One does not look substantially better or worse than the other and in a lot of cases the only difference is color morphing due to tank conditions. However, I also own the the SBB Hephaesteus, which is a similar morph of forementioned zoas. Except the coloring is FAR more intense and it does have a defining characteristic that is unique to that particular strain of zoanthid. When browsers first hit the hobby there were plenty more that were very similar, if not exactly the same shortly afterward but I have yet to see another that it is even close enough to a Heph to even think that it's the same thing.

Don't get me started on Torches. Torches are the biggest scam in the hobby, IMO. What's being labeled as something that's rare, is on every trans-shipper and wholesalers stock list every week. The only possible exception being the original HG. That one is special, and you don't see a ton like it available, but there definitely are some occasionally.

 

[Dan_P]

I love that everyone loves collecting corals, but I saw something at Reefstock that really, really bothered me. I specific high end coral vendor was buying stuff off of other vendors in order to fleece the crowds by making up names and abusing their reputation as a high end seller in order to make money and proportedly sell things as "rare" or "unique" just because you have a really reputable brand behind you.

This is not okay and I hope you know who you are if you are reading this.

I will not be purchasing from you again and upon asking a local LFS this is not the first year they have done this so I can only believe this behavior is happening at other shows as well.

For the record, it was not Top Shelf Aquatics. They had a good selection and I got some more dragon tongue. It WAS
another nationally recognized brand.

Buying a coral at a show is one thing, but to use your reputation and good brand name to screw over hobbyists is another. I'm pretty upset about it but I just won't ever give them my money.

Not only that but they had a habit of trying to tell customers including myself, "awwww man there's some rare stuff in there" only for me to see them run up to a booth I was at later on and quickly tell a vendor "I'll take these three scolies just charge my card thanks" only to see that they later gave them weird names I'd never heard of.

Not only that, I saw them buy up a hammer coral colony labelled as hammer coral colony and proceed to then take it over, give the name of jack o lantern hammer or something, and charge basically double what the original LFS wanted.


Look, I know you want to make money, everyone there does.

But if you want to sell coral, how about checking your corals in the plane like everyone else instead of ripping off communities of hobbyists around the country.

End of rant.

This just rubbed me the wrong way. The market pays what it can but I have a firm belief that scalping via arbitrage shouldn't be allowed. When a hobbyist asks about your corals, I expect to buy your corals, not some flatworm infested p.o.s. that you bought from the maricultured 7 for $100 area and claimed was a special coral.

Anyone who wants to know the vendor can privately pm me and come to their own conclusions, but I believe it is my duty to spread this awareness as this vendor charges a very, very healthy markup and I can confidently say that this was not consistent with their public image, at all.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, if it was any other vendor I probably wouldn't be so upset about it but I think this is just plain fraud.

I should also note, I have photographic evidence of other vendors complaining about this specific vendor at past events, and lack of truthful provenance of the corals and how they were obtained.

Ah yes, capitalism.

 

[Dom]

OP said to PM him for the vendor's name.

I didn't have to

 

[legionofdoon]

HIDE THE CORAL THERES POOR PEOPLE AROUND!!

Super elitiest mentality here. “Hobby to expensive, find another one”. Aquarium keeping was once a relatively affordable hobby genius. It’s people like the ones you’re making excuses for making it not so. “There are loads of 10 to 15 dollar corals out there”. Stop lying dude. I have NEVER seen a 10 or 15 dollar coral since like 2005 at a business. Unless it’s some sketchy potheads house selling you a frag with every ailment known to the hobby on it.

“Can’t afford a 100k electric car?” Walk pleb lol.

I’m not advocating government intervention. I’m saying the people shun them until they go out of business.

My LFS has 10-15 dollar frags all the time. I just bought a 7 polyp Rasta frag from them for 15.

 

[albano]

My LFS has 10-15 dollar frags all the time. I just bought a 7 polyp Rasta frag from them for 15.

at FFM in Connecticut, 2 weeks ago, there were multiple vendors that apparently didn’t want to pack up all their unsold frags… I got 12 frags for $100, and none were less than 50cent piece size! Sorry that I didn’t buy many more, could have traded them to LFS for big credit on future purchases!

 

[Dburr1014]

at FFM in Connecticut, 2 weeks ago, there were multiple vendors that apparently didn’t want to pack up all their unsold frags… I got 12 frags for $100, and none were less than 50cent piece size! Sorry that I didn’t buy many more, could have traded them to LFS for big credit on future purchases!

Packing time is when to get the deals. Not a selection, but great deals.

 

[ThaBeast]

My big concern would be that I like to buy aquacultured pieces and know what parameters the vendor grows the corals. If the vendor is just wholesaling I may as well buy the pieces that look nice on ebay

 

[deerhunter06]

That is misleading of them, but unfortunately coral are not manufactured and there is no blue book value on coral "model" types, per se. It is up to the consumer to know what they are buying, and buyers beware of people renaming things. That's why I advocate to just go back to the old days of calling them, "green acro", or "orange hammer", etc.

That mentality is wrong, sure a consumer should have an idea what they are purchasing but if you have a business and you advertise something as something and it’s not that’s SHADY and WRONG. You should be able to TRUST people especially businesses. This mentality is what’s wrong with the world, greed greed greed. Disgusting.

 

[Jlew766]

The only problem I have with this is it constantly drives the prices higher and higher. Who here remembers when hammer and frogspawn were 25 dollars a head. And when you could go to a show and spend 100 bucks and feel like wow actually made a dent in my tank. Now if you have someone who goes and spends 1k on all the hammers and sells them for 100 dollars a head how's that help the hobby. I mean yeah the lfs made what he wanted and sees them resold for a 100 a head and says like a smart business person, "gee, I can sell mine for 50 a head and make double" so he sells them for 50 and then the same thing happens but the price inflates to 150 on the big business end with a new name change. It goes like this untill it reaches the highest price the market can sustain. It just hurts the people who are new to the hobby and even discourages people from joining. And hurts people who don't have the money to pay market cap prices.