Selling corals commercially

[xine]

You should check out Reefkoi in Colorado Springs. He has been in the game for many years and started out selling in his house. Really nice guy and he might give you some advice if you go to his shop. I haven't talked to him in years since he quit doing the frag swaps. I think he finally realized reefing was taking up too much of his time.

We have several "basement" stores in my area. They all mainly deal off FB, not much from their websites. They run a batch of corals every day or every other day, either by "mine" game or auctions. Some do raffles though that is illegal. One of them is always posting what he is sending out that week, which is usually 12+ boxes of corals. All of them grow very few of their own corals. They just bring frags in from wholesalers.

I actually just went there for the first time last week and spent about an hour chatting with the son and picked up some nice zoas! Small world!

I’ll definitely have to ask more about how they started out next time I visit, thanks for the tip

Yeah the further I got into planning the more I realized there was absolutely no way I was going to be remotely successful farming my own corals from frags. I set up a ton of wholesale accounts last week and have actually been really happy to find the pricing is really reasonable. Plus quite a few of the wholesalers I have accounts with offer 24-48 hr DOA guarantees which is huge!

Hmm… What’s a “mine” game?

That’s super helpful to have an idea of the number of sales smaller home operations are doing so thank you! A dozen orders a week is a good goal to work toward.

 

[xine]

I would avoid eBay and make a website to sell from direct

I sold a 100 item on eBay. I put in the dimensions of the package. It charged the buyer 31$ shipping. With the eBay discount, shipping cost me 33$

The final value fee comes out of the sale price + the shipping money. So even though eBay already undercharge the buyer on the sh and I lost 2$, then they charge a final value fee on the sh and I lost even more

In the end, the item sold for 130 with sh, I ended up around 75$ deposited to me, and that’s not counting the sh materials and for corals you need
Small boxes lined with styrofoam
Bags
Rubber bands
Heat packs
Packing materials
Tape
Labels

^ not a lot for someone mailing out a box once in a while but if you had 20 a month then this starts to add up.

Anyway, make a website. Sell from there. Or give eBay 20% of your profit on every sale

Thanks this is really helpful!

I couldn’t believe the recommended fee eBay suggests for their marketing/promoted listings is 17% of the revenue from the sale. Crazy! I can definitely see how you end up with slim margins selling on eBay.

I’m actually getting ready to launch my website in the next couple days here! Just need to take product photos and get them up.

I’m not sure what the best way is to generate traffic to the site though. I’m guessing I’ll need to build a social media presence and launch some google ads, YouTube ads, and maybe some ads on here as well.

Do you think having a shop on eBay or Etsy is worthwhile at the beginning just for visibility or is that money probably better spent on paid ads? I know they can be pricy too. My partner used to be a marketing manager and their target for most clients was around $3/click with only a small percentage of those converting into sales or even email sign ups, but most clients were paying $10-15/click before coming to them.

I would avoid eBay and make a website to sell from direct

I sold a 100 item on eBay. I put in the dimensions of the package. It charged the buyer 31$ shipping. With the eBay discount, shipping cost me 33$

The final value fee comes out of the sale price + the shipping money. So even though eBay already undercharge the buyer on the sh and I lost 2$, then they charge a final value fee on the sh and I lost even more

In the end, the item sold for 130 with sh, I ended up around 75$ deposited to me, and that’s not counting the sh materials and for corals you need
Small boxes lined with styrofoam
Bags
Rubber bands
Heat packs
Packing materials
Tape
Labels

^ not a lot for someone mailing out a box once in a while but if you had 20 a month then this starts to add up.

Anyway, make a website. Sell from there. Or give eBay 20% of your profit on every sale

Thanks this is really helpful!

I couldn’t believe the recommended fee eBay suggests for their marketing/promoted listings is 17% of the revenue from the sale. Crazy! I can definitely see how you end up with slim margins selling on eBay.

I’m actually getting ready to launch my website in the next couple days here! Just need to take product photos and get them up.

I’m not sure what the best way is to generate traffic to the site though. I’m guessing I’ll need to build a social media presence and launch some google ads, YouTube ads, and maybe some ads on here as well.

Do you think having a shop on eBay or Etsy is worthwhile at the beginning just for visibility or is that money probably better spent on paid ads? I know they can be pricy too. My partner used to be a marketing manager and their target for most clients was around $3/click with only a small percentage of those converting into sales or even email sign ups, but most clients were paying $10-15/click before coming to them.

 

[BeanAnimal]

A dozen orders a week. Let’s call it 2 hours of aggregated work per order, if all goes well. That is 24 hours a week of work.

You said you want to do this for extra money. Do you have a job? Where does the extra time come from? Does that 24 hours a week pay you more than a 24 hour per week side job?

I have had plenty of friends in med school — I don’t know many that had that kind of free time, even without a side job.

Let’s be realistic, is 24 hours a week even realistic?
-managing stock orders.
-tank maintenance
-fragging
-packaging
-trips to shipper
-customer service
-dealing with shipper issues
-dealing with records, business admin, accounting, tax prep.
-sales tax? Do you have any idea how much trouble it is?
-time for marketing?
Etc.

I think that I would prefer my future doctor to concentrate on studying to be a doctor and not trying to juggle running a startup business…

But it sounds like you are doing this no matter what… so good luck and I hope things work out.

 

[xine]

I can’t honestly fathom how you expect to handle medical school and open a profitable small business at the same time. A coral fragging and shipping business is not a few hours a week thing.

I worked full time in a clinical setting while taking a full load of graduate level science classes, studying for the MCAT, applying to 25 med schools, tutoring students as a side gig, and finishing a PhD, while also making time for several hobbies. I’m a pretty high energy person and I like to stay busy. Things like this are fun for me and actually make me feel recharged whereas if I don’t have enough to do I feel bored and drained.

So it’s not so much that I think this is going to be easy and low effort, but this is the kind of thing I enjoy putting effort into. In the past couple weeks alone I’ve spent dozens of hours building my brand and website, researching market value and demand and buying inventory, establishing an LLC and all the business licenses I need, completing a bunch of DIY projects to prep my tanks to hold a lot of coral and automate things as much as possible, and a million other random things that have come up. I don’t mind hard work and if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that if I really want something I’ll find a way to make it happen so I’m not stressing it.

Honestly after how busy I’ve been the last couple years medical school is going to be like a break. Plus this is realistically one of the last opportunities I’ll have to start something like this. Med school is extremely flexible and after so many years of school I’m pretty efficient at it. Residency will be extremely inflexible so if I want to keep doing this then I’ll have to hire at least 1-2 employees to manage customer service and shipping since those are more time-sensitive tasks and I’ll have to focus more on the big picture aspects of running a business that can be done at odd hours. After residency, I’ll be working full time and probably have kids, so again not a good time to start a business. The way I see it I have the next 4 years to scale to a level that will allow me to maintain the business once my life is less flexible.

 

[xine]

A dozen orders a week. Let’s call it 2 hours of aggregated work per order, if all goes well. That is 24 hours a week of work.

You said you want to do this for extra money. Do you have a job? Where does the extra time come from? Does that 24 hours a week pay you more than a 24 hour per week side job?

I have had plenty of friends in med school — I don’t know many that had that kind of free time, even without a side job.

Let’s be realistic, is 24 hours a week even realistic?
-managing stock orders.
-tank maintenance
-fragging
-packaging
-trips to shipper
-customer service
-dealing with shipper issues
-dealing with records, business admin, accounting, tax prep.
-sales tax? Do you have any idea how much trouble it is?
-time for marketing?
Etc.

I think that I would prefer my future doctor to concentrate on studying to be a doctor and not trying to juggle running a startup business…

But it sounds like you are doing this no matter what… so good luck and I hope things work out.

Just being in school and working 24 hours a week is a cakewalk compared to what I’ve been doing!

For what it’s worth several of the med schools I’ve interviewed with encourage entrepreneurship and a large number of their students begin start-ups while in attendance. A lot of med schools actually have concentrations in business and entrepreneurship now. There are several located around Silicon Valley and I encourage you to look at the number of physicians and faculty that own and operate multiple businesses while maintaining a clinical load, research and teaching duties. One of the professors whose research I was most interested in currently operates 8 different start-ups… But you’re probably better off avoiding those Stanford doctors since they were too focused on their businesses to pay attention in class!

 

[xine]

As far as I know there is no sh insurance on coral

I just had this happen to me last week.

I rarely sell corals. Rarely. Decided I had some high value ones and was in a need for extra cash. I sold coral for 600$. Shipped ups overnight by noon. Took it to ups in the afternoon and dropped off

That night check tracking - it’s scanned in. But nothing else

Next morning. Nothing.

Call ups - they won’t do any thing until 7pm

At 6:30 pm (was supposed to arrive in another state by noon!) tracking is updated. It’s 4 states from me. In the opposite direction as the destination.

Next day. It’s in the correct state by morning. Then I get a notification. They ar delaying a day due to weather

I call. They won’t let the Buyer pickup from the local hub.

A day later. It arrived. All dead

Now I’m out 600$ + the high end coral. Complete loss for all if us

Can you sell enough to be able to absorb things like this ?

Ups covers nothing except the sh fee I bought because next day air is guaranteed. So wow. I get 50$ back. Not even the 100$ all packages are insured for because coral isn’t covered

Oh no that’s the worst! I’m sorry that happened.

I looked into it very briefly before and I believe there are a few niche mail services that will provide live animal shipping insurance for an added fee, but typically you have to go through a third party insurer.

Whether that’s worthwhile would depend on how often that kind of thing happens. If it’s one in 20 sales then I’m confident I can absorb that. If it’s one in 10 then insurance on any shipments over a certain value is probably worthwhile. I’ll probably err on the side of caution and spend the extra money on insurance for higher value orders until I know what percent of profits will be lost to shipping issues.

I do think it’s a lot more tolerable if you’re reselling wholesale corals than if you’re farming them yourself because the margins on wholesale are pretty good for online retail. If I buy the colony of 8 yumas sitting in my shopping cart for $60, and average retail price is $50 each for this particular yuma, that’s 7x my investment so there’s a lot of wiggle room to cover packing materials, shipping costs, and to buffer losses. I think the higher end corals are probably where you take a bigger loss because the risk is so concentrated when a single head is hundreds of dollars, but of course you have to offer high end corals to attract customers so I think I’ll just have to find the right balance.

 

[BeanAnimal]

Respectfully - it sounds to me like you are telling yourself what you want to hear and that the only real advice you are willing to entertain is that which aligns with what you have already decided, or builds upon it.

So you are not in med school yet and have not owned a business, but are planning tackle both at the same time because your partner has a business, you think it will be easy, and (IMHO) misguided med schools run by out of touch academics are telling their students to spend their time focused on creating side businesses instead of being dedicated to learning medicine as a career?

If it is actually true that some medical schools are now commonly telling students to also focus on creating and running side business while going to school, I find that to be insanely ridiculous, but I suppose par for the coarse these days.

 

[Reefing102]

There are insurance companies out there that will insure coral shipments. I believe @PacificEastAquaculture uses UPS Capital for their insurance. It’s an added cost but may be something to consider.

 

[Tamberav]

My husbands ICU rotation was 4-6 weeks of 12 hours with only 4 days off while still writing research papers and prepping for all the dang step tests.

I can't imagine doing coral farming and that. In pre-med you could mess around with it but not once you get in the thick of it. It may be a struggle just to maintain your own tank some days.

If you are looking for a strong app to specialize, that is going to be in performing, writing and publishing research papers.

Medical school is not a break. You need to perform well, do side **** to make your app look nice and secure a residency.

 

[Featherweight]

Respectfully - it sounds to me like you are telling yourself what you want to hear and that the only real advice you are willing to entertain is that which aligns with what you have already decided, or builds upon it.

So you are not in med school yet and have not owned a business, but are planning tackle both at the same time because your partner has a business, you think it will be easy, and (IMHO) misguided med schools run by out of touch academics are telling their students to spend their time focused on creating side businesses instead of being dedicated to learning medicine as a career?

If it is actually true that some medical schools are now commonly telling students to also focus on creating and running side business while going to school, I find that to be insanely ridiculous, but I suppose par for the coarse these days.

This is how hustle culture works. I was married to a surgeon for many years. She can't flip off the do mentality because she's trained now. The whole family part takes second fiddle...

 

[Kodock]

It really depends on if you are going to be a for sale at all times type structure or waves when bulk growth is finished. I would do all auctions ending at once. You need enough listed, or high end corals available to justify the buyer wanted to pay for shipping.

Entrepreneurial retail sales is virtually a 24/7 job.. between inquiries, order checking, fulfillment, supply management, etc. I do watch the same corals sit on ebay for a long, long time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, but mostly selling frags has just been a way to recoup some cost in the hobby, electricity, salt, replace equipment, buy new corals, etc. The only way to arguably become TRULY profitable is for it to get full time focus.

People ignore the book cost in evaluating coral sale profitability, because since they’re already up and running it somehow doesn’t exist.

A typical job doesn’t rely on perishable formalities like coral fragging, there’s less risk involved and the only sunk cost is transportation and well.. taxes. Just don’t be discouraged if it was money you were after. As you start, you’re building a customer base and well street cred here. I hope it does work out for you though and good luck in med school!

P.s I’d just do high end bounce mushrooms. It’s hard to kill mushrooms.

 

[xine]

Respectfully - it sounds to me like you are telling yourself what you want to hear and that the only real advice you are willing to entertain is that which aligns with what you have already decided, or builds upon it.

So you are not in med school yet and have not owned a business, but are planning tackle both at the same time because your partner has a business, you think it will be easy, and (IMHO) misguided med schools run by out of touch academics are telling their students to spend their time focused on creating side businesses instead of being dedicated to learning medicine as a career?

If it is actually true that some medical schools are now commonly telling students to also focus on creating and running side business while going to school, I find that to be insanely ridiculous, but I suppose par for the coarse these days.

The “out of touch academics” teaching medical students are generally themselves practicing physicians…

It’s ironic that you suggest I lack knowledge about attending medical school or running a business, yet I’ve financially and logistically supported my partner in building a successful business over the last 5 years and am months away from completing my first doctorate. Meanwhile you seem to feel more qualified than physicians to determine what is required for the practice of medicine, yet your only qualification is knowing people that went to medical school.

Also I’m genuinely curious… what makes you need to believe it’s impossible to succeed at both medicine and business? I’ve always found it odd when people are determined to place limits on what others are capable of achieving. Are you just risk averse? Do you truly believe that running a business and attending medical school will be catastrophic? That I’ll somehow pass all of the rigorous licensing requirements to become an MD despite having no actual medical knowledge because I spent four years thinking of nothing but corals?

Nearly everyone has offered helpful advice, plenty of which contradicted my initial plan, which has since changed in light of new information. I’m more than happy to take advice and change my perspective when people offer valuable insight. You just haven’t. In fact, you have yet to offer any tangible knowledge or share why you’re qualified to give advice on the topic. All you seem to have are opinions and some oddly rigid ideas about what doctors can and can’t do with their time.

So, respectfully, no I won’t take your advice to quit before I even start. In reality, the worst case scenario is that I spend some time and money on something that ultimately isn’t successful and I don’t have a coral business. It’s really not that big of a deal and I’d much rather try and fail than not pursue my interests or passions because I’m afraid of failure.

My husbands ICU rotation was 4-6 weeks of 12 hours with only 4 days off while still writing research papers and prepping for all the dang step tests.

I can't imagine doing coral farming and that. In pre-med you could mess around with it but not once you get in the thick of it. It may be a struggle just to maintain your own tank some days.

If you are looking for a strong app to specialize, that is going to be in performing, writing and publishing research papers.

Medical school is not a break. You need to perform well, do side **** to make your app look nice and secure a residency.

I spent the last 4 years working in a clinic (10 hour shifts 4 days a week) while taking a full load of graduate level courses, teaching college courses and tutoring, and completing a dissertation. I’m not saying that medical school is easy, but it absolutely will be a break compared to the workload I’ve been carrying for a very long time. Available data indicates the average work week for a medical student is about 60 hours. For the last four years my average work week has been 80-100 hours.

That being said, it sounds like your husband had a particularly brutal rotation and you’re completely right that I would have to offload responsibilities onto my partner or hire help if I had a similar rotation but the 3 schools I’ve been accepted to so far have very transparent clinical rotation schedules that are very chill. Two of the schools have clinical experiences spread across all 4 years as there’s been a push toward longitudinal early clinical experiences, and third year is pretty much completely open to focus on research, entrepreneurial opportunities, service work, and/or local or global electives. They also don’t have any mandatory lectures so you can watch them on 2x speed at home, and in information sessions 3rd and 4th yr students talked about how much time they had to focus on extracurriculars and how great work-life balance was (this was not the case everywhere I interviewed lol).

I’ll be doing genomics and bioinformatics research, which is what my PhD is in. Once you have a good grasp of bioinformatics, turnaround time for genomics projects can be extremely fast. Collect samples, send them out for library prep and sequencing, and once you get the sequence data back you can assemble a genome from scratch in under a day. It’s pretty amazing stuff!

 

[xine]

There are insurance companies out there that will insure coral shipments. I believe @PacificEastAquaculture uses UPS Capital for their insurance. It’s an added cost but may be something to consider.

Thank you! It looks like that and ShipYourAquatics both offer insurance that covers any losses due to delays.

ShipYourAquatics is only $2.50 per $100 of coverage! I can’t find an exact quote for UPS Capital but I’ll look into that as well and post an update here if it’s a better price.

 

[BeanAnimal]

It’s ironic that you suggest I lack knowledge about attending medical school or running a business, yet I’ve financially and logistically supported my partner in building a successful business over the last 5 years and am months away from completing my first doctorate. Meanwhile you seem to feel more qualified than physicians to determine what is required for the practice of medicine, yet your only qualification is knowing people that went to medical school.

Irony works both ways though, doesn't it?

You are not a doctor or a medical student as of yet, but feel qualified to speak to what is required for the practice of medicine.

You are not a coral farmer, yet feel qualified enough to speak to opinions regarding coral farming.

Likewise, you do not know my background, education or experience, yet feel qualified enough to portray me us unqualified to have an opinion on those same matters.

Also I’m genuinely curious… what makes you need to believe it’s impossible to succeed at both medicine and business?

I did not say it was impossible, by any means. My thoughts were actually rather clear in the fact that I see a logical conflict of interest in a medical school encouraging, or prospective physician desiring to split their mental and physical resources to accommodate two different goals that vie for those resources. I stand by that, opinion.

Nearly everyone has offered helpful advice, plenty of which contradicted my initial plan, which has since changed in light of new information. I’m more than happy to take advice and change my perspective when people offer valuable insight. You just haven’t. In fact, you have yet to offer any tangible knowledge or share why you’re qualified to give advice on the topic. All you seem to have are opinions and some oddly rigid ideas about what doctors can and can’t do with their time.

You have basically confirmed my point, oddly rigid (to you) or not. You're interested in opinions that align with your goal of moving forward with your plans and not interested in those that are against the idea. You have had an answer for each and every one of them that you feel negates the concern. That is your prerogative and I don't personally care what choice you make or how you use your time. You asked for opinions, I offered mine.

Sincerely - Best of luck with both medical school and your coral business. The world needs more good doctors.

 

[Tamberav]

Well, I don't recommend it but I wish you good luck.

Remember to also take time for your family, friends, significant other, and yourself. Find time to cook healthy meals, exercise and to get proper sleep. The hobby will still be here after medical school and residency. It's not always great to be a work-a-holic.

 

[Keithb22]

My husbands ICU rotation was 4-6 weeks of 12 hours with only 4 days off while still writing research papers and prepping for all the dang step tests.

I can't imagine doing coral farming and that. In pre-med you could mess around with it but not once you get in the thick of it. It may be a struggle just to maintain your own tank some days.

If you are looking for a strong app to specialize, that is going to be in performing, writing and publishing research papers.

Medical school is not a break. You need to perform well, do side **** to make your app look nice and secure a residency.

This right here is spot on. I can’t tell you how every July is absolutely chaos because of the massive Influx every hospital has of new doctors. The amount of time is absolutely asinine, you can tell the md who spent his time not focused on med school and those that put the time in to understand the constant evolving science backed processes that are being practiced. You get back what you put into med school, so yes you can do the absolute minimum but remember that it’s not a fish or coral that is affected by your split second decisions it’s the patient. If you think you can breeze into a fellowship that’s another thing coming as well, you get one shot on day one to show an attending you’re not just some goof.
Then you have to consider all the time you’ll be on call, so when you finally go to the room in the hospital to sleep after a 18 hour shift but then Becky/Ben, your RN, call and say hey Mrs.smith is 42/palp…back at it again.

I’m not even going to get into what your ICU rotation will be like. Our pulm med ICU only does 3 week rotations for first year residents because of the fact it was eating them up so badly. Ie. you get an ed pt and they’re routine but come up hemorrhaging blood from every possible place, to the point a critical care attending says “what the heck is going on”. You don’t want to be the one who did the minimum and treated med school as a breeze.

I’ll do one more example. We have this renowned physician that has climbed multiple summits, the college and hospital hold him in high accord. But the staff that work with him say otherwise. That he’s to focused on his next climb and rushes his surgeries/fusions and has repeatedly nicked the Dura.

I’m going to stop because I could literally go on for hours. Please just heed what is involved in actually making a profit in coral and contrast that with the time you need to be at least competent in medicine…which you won’t be until after your first year of mind melting, back breaking work under your fellow. Best of luck in both endeavors

Not trying to be a D, just want to communicate to you how important it is med school and residency isn’t an after thought and deserves more than what google says in devotion. The people that rely on you and everyone else in the medical field can have disastrous outcomes due a split second choice.

 

[Jmp998]

OP-I wish you the best of luck.

If you are incredibly intelligent and energetic, I think maybe you can do this the first 1-2 years of med school when you are mostly doing didactics.

For most medical schools, you will be doing clinical rotations your third and fourth years. Some of those rotations simply will not be flexible with regard to hours worked and days off. You will have to have a plan to maintain the business during these times, e.g. a deeply committed partner.

If you are attending an ‘online’ medical school, then you will likely need to do clinical rotations away from where you live.

You need to have a plan to deal with these issues, otherwise you will have to make a difficult choice in a couple of years. Being smart and working hard are assets, not plans.

My opinion, which I expect you will ignore, is that starting both of these at once is a very challenging idea. I would think about which is more important to you and do that first. A regular side hustle with non-living merchandise would be much easier, you could just pause for a week or month if needed. If you try to do that with a coral farm, you risk losing everything.

 

[xine]

It really depends on if you are going to be a for sale at all times type structure or waves when bulk growth is finished. I would do all auctions ending at once. You need enough listed, or high end corals available to justify the buyer wanted to pay for shipping.

Entrepreneurial retail sales is virtually a 24/7 job.. between inquiries, order checking, fulfillment, supply management, etc. I do watch the same corals sit on ebay for a long, long time. I’m not saying you shouldn’t try, but mostly selling frags has just been a way to recoup some cost in the hobby, electricity, salt, replace equipment, buy new corals, etc. The only way to arguably become TRULY profitable is for it to get full time focus.

People ignore the book cost in evaluating coral sale profitability, because since they’re already up and running it somehow doesn’t exist.

A typical job doesn’t rely on perishable formalities like coral fragging, there’s less risk involved and the only sunk cost is transportation and well.. taxes. Just don’t be discouraged if it was money you were after. As you start, you’re building a customer base and well street cred here. I hope it does work out for you though and good luck in med school!

P.s I’d just do high end bounce mushrooms. It’s hard to kill mushrooms.

Yeah as I’ve looked into it I’ve realized that farming frags at home just isn’t going to be profitable. Like you’re saying I’m going to need more variety and volume for it to even be worth the shipping fees!

I’ve noticed that too, unless it’s a well-known seller, an auction, or undercutting the market pretty substantially they seem to sit for quite a while.

I’ve managed to collect a decent number of high end pieces: holy grail and other high end torches and hammers, bounce mushrooms, jawbreakers, etc. I have enough that I could frag them and make back what I’ve spent so far while still keeping some frags to grow out. In total I have 50-60 different corals right now but I’m thinking my best bet is to buy and sell wholesale colonies as “padding” to offer enough options to justify a purchase.

Honestly if it doesn’t work out I’m not spending any money I need so if I can make some money doing this, awesome! If I can’t, I’m gonna be posting lots of pictures of my tank because it’s going to be pretty amazing with all these corals. But really I just love the hobby and I actually think the business side of things is fun.

 

[xine]

I just had this happen to me last week.

I rarely sell corals. Rarely. Decided I had some high value ones and was in a need for extra cash. I sold coral for 600$. Shipped ups overnight by noon. Took it to ups in the afternoon and dropped off

That night check tracking - it’s scanned in. But nothing else

Next morning. Nothing.

Call ups - they won’t do any thing until 7pm

At 6:30 pm (was supposed to arrive in another state by noon!) tracking is updated. It’s 4 states from me. In the opposite direction as the destination.

Next day. It’s in the correct state by morning. Then I get a notification. They ar delaying a day due to weather

I call. They won’t let the Buyer pickup from the local hub.

A day later. It arrived. All dead

Now I’m out 600$ + the high end coral. Complete loss for all if us

Can you sell enough to be able to absorb things like this ?

Ups covers nothing except the sh fee I bought because next day air is guaranteed. So wow. I get 50$ back. Not even the 100$ all packages are insured for because coral isn’t covered

So I looked into it more and found Ship Your Aquatics (https://shipyouraquatics.com/) and they seem pretty great! They only cover shipping if you send the package Mon-Wed and it has to be delivered to a FedEx pick up location but it only costs $2.50 for every $100 of insurance, so maybe it could be useful for you too!

 

[areefer01]

Background:
I'm aware of the risks but am dedicated to starting a small business selling corals, primarily as a side job while I'm in medical school and because it's fun. My partner runs his own business so I have a good idea of the challenges involved.

I'll be that person but my recommendation would be to focus on school. Depending on what road medical school takes you residency is a whole different level. I know the residents at both my wife and daughters hospital work extremely difficult rotations and schedules and that of course will depend on your local.