Best way to sell your reef?

Calmbeast · Jan 7, 2016

hello, I am contemplating the idea of selling my reef. Gasp! my question to you the reefing community is what is the best way to go about selling off everything. Fish first and sell it off peice by peice, or save myself the trouble and try to sell as one big package?

Have been running this system for over a year, and before transferring livestock and rock to this system, had been running a 35gal for 3 years.

50-60 gallon cube (sorry can't remember off the top of my head exactly), stand/cabinet, sump, skimmer, heater, reefkeeper lite, ato, LED lighting...so much stuff too much to list now.

Just looking for opinions on this at this point for the best way to sell.

Thanks!!

o2manyfish · Jan 7, 2016

It depends how desperately and quickly you need to get out. If you are not in a rush then take some photos of the entire setup. Tank, stand, canopy, equipment - Put together a price and try to sell it all at once. Whether your system is 1 month old or 3 years old it doesn't hold near the value of what you invested. Take a look at your local craigslist and see if there are similar sized systems available and price accordingly. Regardless if you think (or know) your skimmer is better or more expensive, and your lights are brighter and cooler, it's a used aquarium and the value isn't there.

If after posting craigslist and your local club forms and regional forums on the popular reef sites you don't have any interest then start parting it out.

Parting it out you will net more money, but you have to deal with alot more people.

Sell your corals first, Then coordinate selling the fish and equipment.

You will probably want to pre-sell the fish, and then when the rock is sold, arrange the pickup of the fish and rock on the same day. Once you get the rock out of the tank then you can scoop up the fish easily and pass them to their new owners.

You will have to photograph all the individual pieces of equipment, and to sell quickly be willing to ship some pieces.

Does that give you an idea of how to start your sell off ?

Dave