Your journey in propagation

[CHIEF_OF_THE_REEF]

How did you start your propagation journey?

I know everyone comes here and wants to make lots of money doing it, and I also know some have been very successful and others have failed.

I am in the military, i go out for all different lengths of time. I think that is a good thing. It means my hands are not in the tank and it will have that time to mature more. Luckily, while I am away I have the apex and a willing wife to take care of the events that occur.

So my question is, if your propigating how do you do it?

Mother colony and frag from them?

Just frag from the main display and sell those?

I have a 375 display with a 150 gallon sump, a 50 gallon skimmer tank, with a 210 for a frag tank. All plumbed together.

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Chief

 

[bluemon]

I think if you are coming into this hobby to make loads of money from like you state in the first paragraph, you are in for a world of disappointment. That path really does not pan out for 99% of hobbyists.

I just do it to cut back on my own spending, as I can buy more coral with the small bit I make from cutting excess coral.

 

[CHIEF_OF_THE_REEF]

I think if you are coming into this hobby to make loads of money from like you state in the first paragraph, you are in for a world of disappointment. That path really does not pan out for 99% of hobbyists.

I just do it to cut back on my own spending, as I can buy more coral with the small bit I make from cutting excess coral.

I have been in the hobby a while, and i do know about all the ups and downs about having a tank, with the daily taskers that it requires. I would never plan to completly survive on the fragging of corals, all tho some do. I watch alot of the youtube videos and try to hone in on how much space that is required, like TSA and WWC who have whole butt farms.

 

[DIYreefer]

I’ve been in the hobby for about 20 years and first got my feet wet with a 24 gallon “aquapod” AIO. Given that it was a small tank the first online forum that we found for that sort of thing was nano-reef.com (RIP) and there was a member on there that went by “the propagater.” He offset the expense of the hobby from growing and selling frags and I thought that was the coolest thing ever. I latched on to everything that guy posted and was even more drawn in because he DIY’ed pretty much everything (which I was into for obvious reasons lol).

Fast forward a year or two and I made my first sale. Actually, it was a trade. I traded a few frags for a ps3 (which was the current version available at the time). That was my first time shipping corals and it was much easier than I was lead to believe it to be. For the next few years I sold/traded random frags online and the hobby became self-sustaining for me financially.

Then in 2013 I got banned from posting on the nano-reef classifieds because I was deemed to be a commercial operation. I was operating out of a 20 gallon frag tank at that time, lol. However, that sparked an idea. If they thought I was a commercial operation then maybe it was something I should try. So I did. I had a spare bedroom that we weren’t using at the time so I built my first fairly large propagation tank and was off and running. After two years I had built up a solid customer base and had set up my garage with 3 large systems, and went full time into online coral sales. It was a rollercoaster ride to say the least. I made six figures in year 4, but that level of success was very short lived.

Year 4 was also the year that Hurricane Harvey made initial landfall about 15-20 miles from my house. I didn’t tell anyone at the time, but I had extensive losses from the ensuing extended power outage even though I had a generatorI just didn’t have enough power to run everything. Then, I lost even more of my livestock shortly after that when my wife’s family got hit by another hurricane (the live in FL, I believe it was hurricane maria, iirc.).

Even though I had a solid customer base and the resources to restock, my systems were unstable for months to come. I couldn’t keep much of anything alive. Then, the Indo ban went into effect and Fiji followed shortly after (it may have been the other way around, I don’t recall exactly). So I was screwed. I couldn’t restock no matter what.

So at nearly 40 years old I completely shifted gears and made a huge career change. No more selling corals for a living and given what I’ve experienced in the past, I will never do that again. However, my love of propagation has never left me and ironically, I’m in a similar position today as I was back when I got banned from selling on nano reef back in 2013. I’ve posted frags for sale up on eBay and that got me flagged here (I use to sell quite a bit here).

That stated, I plan to become a sponsor here when the “busy season” kicks back up even though I have absolutely no intent of ever selling corals full time ever again. The thing is, for me, propagation/aquaculture is my favorite aspect of the hobby and I’ll gladly pay the monthly subscription fee, as a hobbyist because it will allow me to once again have have a more personal buyer/seller experience with the people that buy my corals. eBay has been incredibly convenient for me, but I don’t particularly care for how “dry” for lack of a better term, the majority of the transactions are there.

I should clarify one thing.. I’m not a wealthy man and I wouldn’t be able to afford the hobby in the capacity (my tanks total about 400 gallons) that I am now without selling frags to offset the expense. The tanks don’t have to pay any bills, but they need to at least mostly pay for themselves. Fortunately, they do.

 

[chazman113]

Yea I'm in the same boat and just joined R2R. It used to be reefcentral last time I was into the hobby. I've put about 4k into it so far and I don't expect to get that back for some time! From my research starting slow and not expecting a lot of profit is the way to go (unless you are independently wealthy and don't care). I'm pretty sure you could invest the same money in the S&P 500 and for most people it would win. My mentality at the moment is I'm doing it for fun and to learn. In my life experience you don't know what is going to pop and make money but if you never try, nothing will. I like this as a small business idea because, at least in the US, its very domestic and can't really be outsourced.

Anyways, here is a terrible picture of my first attempt at a prop tank. I got a bunch of Zoas from various sources, looking for big sales on bulk packs. I will say its probably going to be more profitable in the long run to get WYSIWYG zoas that really "pop" and market them as premium. Out of the packs I only got a few that really light up in blue light. At the same time I wanted to make sure I could keep everything and experiment with getting more growth so the budget route was probably best.

 

[DIYreefer]

Yea I'm in the same boat and just joined R2R. It used to be reefcentral last time I was into the hobby. I've put about 4k into it so far and I don't expect to get that back for some time! From my research starting slow and not expecting a lot of profit is the way to go (unless you are independently wealthy and don't care). I'm pretty sure you could invest the same money in the S&P 500 and for most people it would win. My mentality at the moment is I'm doing it for fun and to learn. In my life experience you don't know what is going to pop and make money but if you never try, nothing will. I like this as a small business idea because, at least in the US, its very domestic and can't really be outsourced.

Anyways, here is a terrible picture of my first attempt at a prop tank. I got a bunch of Zoas from various sources, looking for big sales on bulk packs. I will say its probably going to be more profitable in the long run to get WYSIWYG zoas that really "pop" and market them as premium. Out of the packs I only got a few that really light up in blue light. At the same time I wanted to make sure I could keep everything and experiment with getting more growth so the budget route was probably best.

I like it! Looks like you're maximizing the available space with that help up above. Is that a plywood tank or is it fiberglass? Either way, it looks good! It also seems like you have the right mindset and aren't looking for a "get rich quick" scheme. Which is good, because unless you are very good at marketing and have a VERY good source for high quality livestock that probably won't happen! lol.

Regarding livestock, I've done best with named corals that are aquacultured and have been known throughout the hobby for a long time. My advice for livestock would be to get stuff that you like, and that you know you can successfully grow. Chances are that there are plenty of other people that will like those corals as well. You just have to find them.You may very well be able to import something that isn't well known/commonly seen in the hobby and market it well, resulting in some serious profit. I'm not saying that's a bad idea at all, but I haven't had much luck doing that sort of thing personally. But I'm certainly not a hype man, that's for sure lol.

I'm really good at growing and shipping corals, following through making things right when something goes wrong with an order, etc.. but I absolutely SUCK at marketing/promoting myself and my corals.

On that note, I did inadvertently garner quite a bit of attention last month that resulted in a good amount of sales. I posted a video of one of my tanks on a reef tank subreddit that kinda caught fire. It ended up with over 28k views, which subsequently resulted in over $5k in sales. The funny thing is that when I posted the video the intent wasn't for self promotion/advertisement at all. I simply wanted to post my tank for likeminded people that I thought might enjoy seeing it. My wife has a tiktok page that we have used to try to drum up sales with varying results, but that one post on reddit generated far more sales than everything that his been posted on tiktok combined lol.

 

[chazman113]

Yea I'm in the same boat and just joined R2R. It used to be reefcentral last time I was into the hobby. I've put about 4k into it so far and I don't expect to get that back for some time! From my research starting slow and not expecting a lot of profit is the way to go (unless you are independently wealthy and don't care). I'm pretty sure you could invest the same money in the S&P 500 and for most people it would win. My mentality at the moment is I'm doing it for fun and to learn. In my life experience you don't know what is going to pop and make money but if you never try, nothing will. I like this as a small business idea because, at least in the US, its very domestic and can't really be outsourced.

Anyways, here is a terrible picture of my first attempt at a prop tank. I got a bunch of Zoas from various sources, looking for big sales on bulk packs. I will say its probably going to be more profitable in the long run to get WYSIWYG zoas that really "pop" and market them as premium. Out of the packs I only got a few that really light up in blue light. At the same time I wanted to make sure I could keep everything and experiment with getting more growth so the budget route was probably best.

I like it! Looks like you're maximizing the available space with that help up above. Is that a plywood tank or is it fiberglass? Either way, it looks good! It also seems like you have the right mindset and aren't looking for a "get rich quick" scheme. Which is good, because unless you are very good at marketing and have a VERY good source for high quality livestock that probably won't happen! lol.

Regarding livestock, I've done best with named corals that are aquacultured and have been known throughout the hobby for a long time. My advice for livestock would be to get stuff that you like, and that you know you can successfully grow. Chances are that there are plenty of other people that will like those corals as well. You just have to find them.You may very well be able to import something that isn't well known/commonly seen in the hobby and market it well, resulting in some serious profit. I'm not saying that's a bad idea at all, but I haven't had much luck doing that sort of thing personally. But I'm certainly not a hype man, that's for sure lol.

I'm really good at growing and shipping corals, following through making things right when something goes wrong with an order, etc.. but I absolutely SUCK at marketing/promoting myself and my corals.

On that note, I did inadvertently garner quite a bit of attention last month that resulted in a good amount of sales. I posted a video of one of my tanks on a reef tank subreddit that kinda caught fire. It ended up with over 28k views, which subsequently resulted in over $5k in sales. The funny thing is that when I posted the video the intent wasn't for self promotion/advertisement at all. I simply wanted to post my tank for likeminded people that I thought might enjoy seeing it. My wife has a tiktok page that we have used to try to drum up sales with varying results, but that one post on reddit generated far more sales than everything that his been posted on tiktok combined lol.

Yea it's plywood with pond armor. I agree I don't think anyone that isn't well established can survive these days with such a speciality product if they aren't marketing themselves on social media or through videos. It seems like that's how some LFS's have adapted as well. Lord knows they've all gone out of business around me. I'm kicking myself for not videoing the build, but there will always be more to build!