What is your opinion on the hobby's status?

[Bayside Corals]

Originally Posted by jorjef

From sustainable supply of livestock, to quality and likelyhood of successful acclimation of the livestock. From high priced new products, even present ones due to greedy manufactures or high exchange rate, call it what ever you want... To shrinking retailers, to unkept outdated websites, to frustrations of no clear instruction for new comers, which is very tough because every tank is unique and what works for one doesn't for another.

I see this hobby shrinking rather than expanding in western Canada or at least scaling back to where only the ones with deep alliances with livestock supplies outside this country will survive, depending on North American wholesalers for the sustainability of a saltwater specific shop is a short lived life.

I think the hobby is doing quite well. Trust me this is not an easy business! It's alot of work with not much pay. It's a business of love. Stores come and go all the time, especially the online basement operations. These people see $$$$ doing what they love. They think it will be easy, get to see sweet fish & corals and get rich doing it. Then reality kicks in. They make half as much as they do with their regular job and work twice as much. Usually takes a year or so for that reality to kick in. Once it does they are gone.

My opinion forums are dying not the hobby. Go on Facebook, most NEW people are on saltwater pages setup on facebook, buy and sell pages, frag pages, etc. The hobby is moving towards social media just like the rest of the world. Yes customers come and go it happens. You stay in it long enough and you see old customer come back. Sometimes people take a break from the hobby for what ever reason. If they were a serious hobbiest they will be back. It's just a matter of when.

[jorjef]

Then why are they showing up here? Lucky? or a diminishing over seas market.. What ever the case is it's an annoyance for me, I can't add a 1 inch hippo tang to my tank. I did add a quarter sized Clown Trigger but I was pretty sure he could handle himself. Question was for the other guy Colby not you.. Oh and for gods sakes man charge my Visa card. I guess I will have to go where the cool kids are on facebook. I don't get to "like" many things due to fact Im using the wife's account.

[Animal-Chin]

Originally Posted by Ryanerickson

Those little tangs you talk of usually go to the higher paying Asian markets we are lucky to be getting them in. Smaller tangs in my experience adapt better to aquariums.

ya I don't know, I went to JL one evening actually hoping to buy a hippo and was shocked to see a tank with 20 dead hippos and 20 that looked rough. The store workers were quickly trying to rescue the living ones and pulling out all the dead ones but it was heart breaking to see. No idea what happened and I didn't ask but those quarter size tangs have to be what a few weeks old? I've tried 2 of them with quarantine and everythign and have had no luck with the little guys...

BTW not picking on JL, they are just the big store around here. I've purchased plenty of quality fish from them.

On a side note, with how fast fish dissapear from that store and how busy it is when I'm in, Id say the hobby isn't slowing down at all. I'd love a count on reef tanks in BC, that would be cool to know...

[Bayside Corals]

Originally Posted by jorjef

Then why are they showing up here? Lucky? or a diminishing over seas market.. What ever the case is it's an annoyance for me, I can't add a 1 inch hippo tang to my tank. I did add a quarter sized Clown Trigger but I was pretty sure he could handle himself. Question was for the other guy Colby not you.. Oh and for gods sakes man charge my Visa card. I guess I will have to go where the cool kids are on facebook. I don't get to "like" many things due to fact Im using the wife's account.

I wasn't directing my response directly at you just wanted to give my point of view.

There for sure are new people that come to the forums, But there are more that are hitting social media first. The majority of new customers I have seen in the last year or so are not on any forums that I am a member of.

Off topic but I would sponsor this forum if the prices justified the traffic it received. Also every sponsor you talk to pays a different price. Would be nice if the price structure was the same for everyone......But it's not.

[Bayside Corals]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Actually, it is the locally grown hobbyist frags that keeps the hobby alive. Besides expensive, I have found LFS frags to be hit and miss, and always worried about pests from them. I would like to see the LFS buy more hobbyist surplus frags rather than the expensive imports. Would be better for them (margins) and would help support their customers. Win/win for all.

The problem with hobbiest surplus frags is that in general they are the left overs. This is not always the case but my experience is as follows. The hobbiest trades his good stuff to friends or other hobbiests for other good stuff that he/she wants. Or he/she sells the good corals on forums, social media, frag swaps etc. Then they go to the LFS with the stuff they couldn't sell or trade to anyone else. In general it is either not nice or just not desirable because everyone in that area that wanted it already has it. So hobbiest grown stuff can be a hard sell for the LFS.

Where as a fresh shipment will have new colors or varieties that people in the area may not have yet.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by Colby Bay

The problem with hobbiest surplus frags is that in general they are the left overs. This is not always the case but my experience is as follows. The hobbiest trades his good stuff to friends or other hobbiests for other good stuff that he/she wants. Or he/she sells the good corals on forums, social media, frag swaps etc. Then they go to the LFS with the stuff they couldn't sell or trade to anyone else. In general it is either not nice or just not desirable because everyone in that area that wanted it already has it. So hobbiest grown stuff can be a hard sell for the LFS.

Where as a fresh shipment will have new colors or varieties that people in the area may not have yet.

Yes, I agree what the hobbyist sells to the LFS is generally the left overs. However, it is priced accordingly (to the seller), and with the the higher LFS traffic, they still seem to sell through pretty quickly. But the LFS also gains more business from the seller (corals sold as credit), and I for one will go out of my way to support an LFS (even if they are more expensive) that buys frags from me.

Some fresh shipments may have good colors, for a while, but in general I have found the hobbyist corals to be the most healthy (of course you need to buy from a reputable seller) and usually take off in the new tank right away. I have seen a lot of brown SPS sitting in LFS shops that were good size, but obviously not happy. I don't think these came from local hobbyists.

Also I cringe when I watch an LFS pop in a batch of new frags without dipping. I saw them do it with mine. I always dip (and usually QT as well) any new corals, no matter who I got them from. So far I have never had a problem, but that (AEFW, etc) is always my biggest fear.

I agree with you about the new varieties, though. Hobbyists (incl myself) are not so quick to offer up their slow growing designer corals. So if I was an LFS, that is what I would be importing.

[Scythanith]

The slow growing designer coral frags cost the retailer nearly as much as the customer, so the markup on those is even more appalling lol! It's all about having that relationship with your LFS that you can take premo stuff to them and they will treat you right That way everyone can be happy. Just not the customer that expects to get it for cheap since it came out of some locals tank, doesn't work that way.

[Bayside Corals]

As far as pricing on fish and corals go. Many things have changed and have been changing for a while. All livestock is paid for in USD, doesn't matter if it comes from the Caribbean, Indo, Australia, Fiji, they all want to be paid in USD. So with the CAD in the ****s the prices have to go up. Freight never goes down, only up and that is a huge factor in the pricing of your livestock. How much does it cost for a plane ticket to Bali? It's not cheap, and what they charge for the box of coral under your seat in the cargo space is not cheap either.

The other thing is the internet. The collectors that grab your corals from the wild have the internet they see what people pay for certain corals and are now charging accordingly. Back in the day it was a crap shoot. You order 100 corals, pay a similar amount for every piece and you get 5 amazing ones, 20 really nice ones, and the rest would either be average or brown. Some collectors would be better than others but in general it was a crap shoot. In short you would pay cheap prices across the board, but the nice corals would have to make up for the brown crap that would never sell.

Now its a get what you pay for, the collectors know what premium corals are and charge a premium price right off the bat. They sell to the highest bidder. Americans, have more people in the hobby and have people that are willing to pay more for corals. So in general most of the really nice corals end up in the USA because they will pay more for them.

If you want the crazy corals you have to pay the crazy prices because if you don't someone else will. It sucks but it's the reality. Most Canadian stores won't pay the big money for the exceptional corals because their customer won't pay the prices the store will need to charge. The stores are not ripping you off. They pay more for the nice corals so they have to charge more for them.

One last note is that the corals are getting smaller directly from the collectors. They see a really nice acan, they chop it up into four pieces and charge the same for each piece instead of the one big piece. Some of these coral colors are exceptionally rare and are literally one out of many thousands type of coral. When one of these corals are found the collectors have alot of people asking for them and are willing to pay top dollar for it. So they chop them up and distribute to as many people as possible all the while maximizing profit. They collect these corals to feed their families just like you go to work everyday to feed yours.

[Bayside Corals]

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[Animal-Chin]

Ya, thats all makes sense Colby Bay, for sure. As soon as Scoly's got popular a red and green one went from $50 to $150. Supply and Demand, its as old as time...