best value for stocking new tank with corals

[ShepherdTech]

my 210 was setup in April and coralline is slowly coming in and have all the fish I want (minus replacing one gold nugget clown that was likely nabbed by a gorilla crab hitchhiker from the LFS. I’ve purchased a few corals from my LFS, but their prices are just too high. I’ve been eyeing a subscription from WWC, but unsure that is the best value. I don’t need super rare corals, but don’t want a mass of brown either. The LFS was charging too much for unnamed and small frags, some that were already dying even, which has just turned me off. Anyone here went the same route and have ideas?

 

[reacclimating 2 the hobby]

Check the for sale section here. I've found great deals to stock my tank. Otherwise, Battlecorals is great, he will make you a box for a price that you pick and how many pieces you want.

 

[Pete Hammersley]

I too have the same issue, LFS have bad, boring and overpriced corals, however buying online is a gamble as you need to buy lots of corals to make it worthwhile when paying the express delivery charge. I recently bought 20 frags online, not one was much bigger than half the size of my little finger nail.

 

[LetItReef]

Check out your local forum.

 

[ahiggins]

If you qt before you add to aquarium, yourreef has some cheap frags that look amazing. Their downside is the frags are usually bombarded with algae (all kinds). Food for thought good luck

 

[ZoWhat]

Hone-in on Live Sales hosted on R2R.

Buuuuuut..... know your pricing bc some of these live sales are NOT much of a sale but only a SALES HYPE.

Best to foresee an advertised Live Sale coming up and immediately go to the Vendors website and look at their regular list prices.

Some vendors sit on outrageous prices bc the coral is sitting in their tank growing and they are just waiting for the Impulse Buyer to pull the trigger.

Some Live Sales thrive on hype getting ppl to buy an overpriced coral just bc its 25% off a high end retail price to begin with.

Sadly I'm seeing more and more R2R Live Sales become Hyped-Events.....inventory-dump at high profit

Also know your shipping costs. Some shipping is as high as $40-$60. If you only buy 2-3 corals, any sales price savings get thrown out the window.

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PRO TIP ON LIVE SALES (I've been thru a lot of them)

* dont use a cellphone. Use a computer hardwired to a high speed Network cable. Preferably around 100-200Mbps. These Live Sales move at the speed of light. Many greatly priced corals last about 30sec before they're bought. So by the time you see a coral drop on a post, you have roughly 30secs to get THRU their websites checkout. Cellphones just cant refresh that fast

* use a browser that autofill fields like name, address, cc#. Again once you jump at a coral you're prob competing with about 20 other ppl for the coral. Autofill greatly reduces checkout time. No autofill? Have your CC# on your Clipboard to paste into the field

* just with those two methods above, I can get thru checkout in about 15secs. Memorizing the mouseclick paths I have to navigate. But I'm still beat out by another buyers with highly sought after corals. That's what makes Live Sales addicting, the thrill of the moment. Feeling great when you grabbed a coral at 75% off list pricing.

* if you plan to make multiple purchases, call your CC company beforehand and get routed to the Fraud Dept. Their servers will see several purchases from the same vendor and will send an alert to a Fraud Teammember. If you already have notes of your account that you will be buying multiple times from this vendor btwn 6pm to 12midnight, they'll override the system so your CC won't get locked down

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So back to pricing:

Example: I collect zoas/palys. Some vendors have those for $20+/polyp. That's high end retail.

Then a Live Sale comes around and they drop to $15/polyp. NOT a big sale. I get unimpressed and just watch others overpay bc it's a Sales Hype event. I just shake my head. But who am I to judge how other ppl spend their money....

I personally will not buy a collector zoa/paly unless it's at or below $10/polyp. If it's in the $5-$7/polyp range and it looks healthy/nice, I'll jump on it.

Do your research, know your pricing ;Bookworm;Bookworm;Bookworm

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Best place I've found is actually the R2R livestock sales forum. I've recently started selling frags through there myself. Some fellow hobbyists are trying to buy trendy coral and grow them out so they can frag them and make a profit. Others, like myself, have bought the corals they'd personally liked and after years have simply grown large and need fragged to keep from overtaking the display tank. These hobbyists generally offer frags for very reasonable prices. Plus a bonus from hobbyists is if they've maintained their tank well enough for the coral to outgrow their system, the coral are likely to be healthy and well adapted to captivity. I'd just recommend asking any seller you're interested in to send you a picture of their frags so you can see what size they are, and how healthy they look before you buy. Some offer 3/4" pieces while others offer 1.5-2" pieces. IME, 3/4" frags take a long time to start taking off in growth, while larger frags start growing sooner.

You can also look for frag swaps in your area. They are another great place to grab up a bunch of coral without having to pay shipping. In my area, I've only found a single frag swap a year within easy driving distance though, so timing may not be on your side for this.