Tips on becoming a designer coral collector
 

Well I'm sure the new folks into the coral game wanna know......how do you get them?

Lets hear your tips for beginner collectors on how to achieve their goal, lets hear your story on how you started , how bad the addiction got and where you are now:)

Game on!!!

Haha this should be good. I think if we say how much $ we have into our systems now it will scare away all the new comers :mrgreen:

are you really sure you want to shock new people this way?

Yeah, and you think the real experts are going to give away their secrets??!!...

Here's my newbie story. When we bought our last house, I inherited a 10 year old tank full of softies and some LPS. It was also full of aiptasia, nitrates and phosphates.

So first step was get the tank into shape and get my nitrates and phosphates down to near zero. That actually took about 2 years for me. Of course it didn't help that I didn't know anything about SW. Bio pellets with MB7 took care of the nitrates, and GFO for the phosphates. Pearlscales got rid of the aiptasia.

Then I started with easy SPS, and more LPS. First lesson was turn down my Radion LEDs so I didn't bleach and kill the new frags. Growth took off, and after about 6 months or so, started selling frags to pay for more expensive "designer" frags that I had my eye on.

Now am adding more "deeper water" SPS, and learned that they need even more gentle care, especially with dipping.

And BTW, I dip everything, and with most, break off the frags from their plugs, and remount on new ones. Also, I QT some new corals, and give them more than one dip. My biggest fear is getting some of these nasty bugs, like AEFW in my tank. So far, I have been lucky.

So, yeah, now I am on the hunt for designer corals. Have a few now, and they are looking good. But a long time still before they will be ready for fragging. Of course, my first objective is to have a good looking tank. So at this time, I am only fragging as a result of pruning (some accidental) and making room for other corals.

And that's my story,... and I'm sticking to it....

Here's a few:

Keep eyes on the forumns, collectors are always ready to pull the trigger

Know your coral !! Be up to date on what's hot and what's not , know the values and how to buy , sometimes bulk is better than being quick.

Before taking the financial dive make sure you can care for what you buy, I rarely ever lose zoanthids no matter what the species

Keep an arsenal to trade , sometimes collectors arnt interested in cash so having some sway plays a good role

Be prepared to pay more than you think is fair , designer corals can be costly and market value can be tough to swallow sometimes



Will touch on this later when not on my phone

From my experience the easiest and only way I can afford some of the fancier corals is to let everyone else buy them and then purchase frags.

That may sound arrogant, but as I can't generally afford any of the rarer corals from retailers, the local reefing community is an invaluable resource. The likes of Rich and Kelly, have made it possible for me to get some really nice corals for a fraction of the price of some retailers.

Then again, there's the likes of mad jelly and fragbox which are also very affordable with drool worthy stuff.

One day I will be that guy that purchases the $400 chalice frag from reef raft and I fully intend on returning the favor to the generous local reefers that have sorted me out over the years.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

I started with the mixed reef with most of my sps being monties. When I down graded to a smaller tank I was able to sink more money into better equipment and realized that I can't house some corals due to size of tank from there I had to decided sps or lps. I went for sps as I liked the challenge. I started with frags from lfs and found others in area that were into sps and from there we were able to do larger orders from places like reef raft. From there it's complete addiction.
Though I try to be self sufficient with my hobby selling frags and equip to buy the $$$$ pieces.

+100

Absolutely guys , community sharing is what makes these even available , the types of corals I collect arnt or rarely found at stores often , do the community is the best place to find them , like I always said the nicest corals are across the street:)

That pretty much sums it up for me to!