Cost of Corals?

[Uncle99]

The seller wants you to pay for their Covid losses.

They are “testing” the markets ability to see what sticks.

Since virtually all the high priced stuff at our local retailers has not moved much since Feb, as an example, the $600 5” maxi clam went to $500, to $400 and finally $300 by mid April. The retailer said to me, nice clam eh ( cause he’s Canadian) and I said yes but times were tough these days so too rich for me.
He dropped it to $225....so sold.

Retailers need cash flow, not just maximizing price.

Until the market stabilizes, be very discriminating on what you buy, be vocal when prices are outrageous and don’t fall into the trap.

If we all are willing to pay these outrageous prices, then, sadly, this sets the price.

 

[shred5]

Part of it is the cost of aquaculture not supply and demand. We are bringing in less and less corals from the wild or wild farming and aquaculturing more. Bringing in a wild colony and chopping it into 100 frags was way cheaper than having to grow a coral over months and fragging it.

Now with aquaculture corals you got the cost of lighting, aquariums, electricity, saltwater, pumps being figured into the cost of a coral. Sunlight and ocean are free.

 

[T-J]

Like others have said, you have to look at the right places for the good prices. Join your local groups Facebook page. In the Arizona Reefing group, I'm constantly seeing people willing to give away, or sell for cheap incredible frags everyday. Heck, I even gave away a bunch of stuff earlier this year.

Make sure you go to the coral shows when they pop up in your area. I went to one this weekend. Of course some vendors had crazy high priced silly named corals, but others had amazing deals. One guy we purchased from had a 6 for $100 deal. And these were all amazing pieces! Plus, almost every vendor was willing to work on pricing with you if you purchased multiple items.

Finally, don't play the "name game". I could care less what the made-up names are for corals. I buy corals based on appearance, not names. Besides, who's going to care? When people come over and ooh and ahh the tank, they don't care about the coral names.

 

[threebuoys]

I believe in free enterprise and if a seller finds a buyer, more power to him.

That said, I think prices overall are ridiculously high. Our hobby is very expensive just to get started. After spending $1,000's for lights, filtration systems, controllers, etc, it's difficult not to get numb to the "got to have it" mentality. So, why not spend a couple of hundred on one frag.

I live 120 miles from the nearest local fish store, so on-line purchases is the only practical way for me to buy just about anything, unless I try to buy everything at the same time. Fortunately I have found what I consider reasonable prices ($15 - $30) and purchased a number of frags that are very attractive (Zoas with 10 - 15 polyps).

My frustration is that many of these micro frags will take years to grow into the beauties many of us aim for. So $30 for a Zoa frag with 1 or 2 polyps is still unreasonable, but if the seller finds a buyer.... And I cannot imagine ever paying several hundred or even thousand for a "rare" 2-3 polyp Zoa. I doubt I'll ever have a Scoly or a Hammer.

Some sellers recognize the value to have lower priced frags for the group of customers that just can't justify the cost. I wish the sellers also targeted a market where a 4" or 5" loaded frag could be sold for a reasonable price. But think about it, a 5" diameter full frag has about 20 square inches. Cut that into the typical 3/4" square frag yields about 25 pieces. At $30 a frag that's $750 for a common Zoa. So, I doubt we will ever see larger size colonies because the seller can make a lot of money even when he can't sell all of his inventory because buyers are willing to pay the price..

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Have you seen the price tag on rainbow splice acro ?

I believe it’s somewhere around the $2500 for a small frag .
Someone correct me if I’m wrong .
I know I will never have one .

Even $300-$500 for a Walt Disney ... I will have one some day when or if they drop in price

$1,000k a frag for splice anywhere in town these days, chunky frags for $1,500-1,700. You see small frags from TCK for $800 or so pretty often

 

[LegendaryCG]

Well, I think a lot of people don’t have access to decent local fish stores. I don’t really want to drive an hour to spend about the same at a store as what I could get for nearly the same price online. The vendor you buy from makes a big difference in price too, I buy a lot direct from Jason Fox and it’s considerably cheaper than from some of the big name stores that carry his corals.

 

[neonreef3d]

In general;, the consistent sellers and farmers put in a lot of work into their systems, and do it right, the high end corals won't grow too fast, are more difficult to grow, and less available. If it were otherwise, they would all be the price of GSP. The cost of the corals are usually justified by the amount of money and time of operating the business.

Im speaking on aqua cultured corals, and not wild..

 

[DanConnor]

An inch of Oregon tort has been $60 for about 20 years, so I would say prices have not changed.
Just don't get sucked into buying this weeks tenuis tip at some nutty price.
Classic corals are great corals, and the prices are reasonable.

If frag swaps have started again in your area you can usually find tons of stuff for $20

 

[Mical]

I shop online vendors & locally. I find best deals locally. Our local stores here in twin cities are pretty reasonable and are pretty trust worthy. I also buy from local reefers - we have one who advertises 10 SPS frags for $100 and he usually throws in a few extras and a small cooler to boot.

 

[Trouble1375]

Well, I think a lot of people don’t have access to decent local fish stores. I don’t really want to drive an hour to spend about the same at a store as what I could get for nearly the same price online. The vendor you buy from makes a big difference in price too, I buy a lot direct from Jason Fox and it’s considerably cheaper than from some of the big name stores that carry his corals.

It's not a lack of LFS for me. I have 4 (actually 5 but I refuse to use one of them after very very poor service) within 15 minutes of my house and if I expand to an hour drive each way there are probably 10 or so. I don't know exact numbers because I just found a new one within 20 minutes of home this past week. All this being said, some of them have great selections but the maintenance quality of the systems is questionable, another one has slim selection but impeccable conditions. The one I just found out about this past week will do their darndest to order any fish or coral you want but they are in a strip mall. The coral section is smaller than a twin sized bed and the entire store is maybe 20' x 20' divided between fresh & saltwater tanks as well as dry goods and storage/maintenance area but I got a huge meat coral for $100 - he needed room in the coral tank and offered any one of the five he had for that price to free up space for the shipment coming in this week. He gave me a $50 in store credit for a fish that had gone rogue and started eating corals. I did not buy that fish from his store either.

 

[Just John]

An inch of Oregon tort has been $60 for about 20 years, so I would say prices have not changed.
Just don't get sucked into buying this weeks tenuis tip at some nutty price.
Classic corals are great corals, and the prices are reasonable.

If frag swaps have started again in your area you can usually find tons of stuff for $20

They can be great. At one near here I bought a dozen head Bam Bam frag for $20 (usually about $10 per head) and 3 head frag of utter chaos for $30 (about $90-$100 at WWC).
(For the real connoisseurs of coral, they even had $1 pulsing xenia!)

 

[reefinatl]

Is it just me or have prices gotten crazy? Is there something driving this? Anybody know of reasonable priced corals?

I personally find it challenging to spend $200+ on a single coral that is usually a fairly small piece and may or may not survive the shipping and or transfer. Even $100 on a single frag seems quite high. What happened to $10-$20 frags or larger coral pieces for $100 - $200?

LEDs, Orange filters, trade names, and online shopping. Go find a local club. I got 15 polyps of AOIs for $40 and it's nearly the most expensive thing in the tank right now only my $50 metallic green trachy was more.

In the DT I have frogspawn, 2 types of hammer, a torch, rainbow acans, two big chunks of birdsnest, blastomussa, 5 zoa types, 2 candycane types each with 5 heads, green digitata, forest fire digitata, 3 ricordeas, green pocillopora, wwc something or other favia, maybe some other stuff I've forgotten about. The nano of doom as I'm calling has GSP, Yellow Polyps, pulsing xenia, Kenya tree, and nuclear green palys. I think I'm in for $300 on all of it for both tanks. My lighting setup is $175 for 2x250w halides with icecap ballasts and phoenix bulbs.

 

[JCM]

LEDs, Orange filters, trade names, and online shopping. Go find a local club. I got 15 polyps of AOIs for $40 and it's nearly the most expensive thing in the tank right now only my $50 metallic green trachy was more.

In the DT I have frogspawn, 2 types of hammer, a torch, rainbow acans, two big chunks of birdsnest, blastomussa, 5 zoa types, 2 candycane types each with 5 heads, green digitata, forest fire digitata, 3 ricordeas, green pocillopora, maybe some other stuff I've forgotten about. The nano of doom as I'm calling has GSP, Yellow Polyps, pulsing xenia, Kenya tree, and nuclear green palys. I think I'm in for $250ish on all of it for both tanks. My lighting setup is $175 for 2x250w halides with icecap ballasts and phoenix bulbs.

Maybe it's just me, but I think a tank filled with those "boring" corals looks just as nice as a tank with tons of fancy 1/2" pieces. Maybe I'm easy to please

 

[Reefs and Geeks]

Have you seen the price tag on rainbow splice acro ?

I believe it’s somewhere around the $2500 for a small frag .
Someone correct me if I’m wrong .
I know I will never have one .

Even $300-$500 for a Walt Disney ... I will have one some day when or if they drop in price

Not everyone charges crazy high prices, though online it seems like they do. I regularly sell Walt Disney frags $50-80 depending on the size. I personally try to be part of the solution and sell/trade frags at affordable prices in hopes of bringing the price from others down a bit. I don't know if it'll work, but if other hobbyists do the same it would sure help!

 

[Conrad Noto]

Is it just me or have prices gotten crazy? Is there something driving this? Anybody know of reasonable priced corals?

I personally find it challenging to spend $200+ on a single coral that is usually a fairly small piece and may or may not survive the shipping and or transfer. Even $100 on a single frag seems quite high. What happened to $10-$20 frags or larger coral pieces for $100 - $200?

Fish too, just saw 3 stripe damsels for 26.99 each and blue damsels for 25.99 each, crazy.

 

[CMMorgan]

In my LFS they have some great corals cheap with no name listed. The guy will even say "I don't know the fancy name, but that's a zoa/acro/etc. we get in". I bought some beautiful scrambled eggs zoas there for not much last week.

Where? LOL I'm not too far from you and I've been looking for scrambled eggs.

 

[reefinatl]

Maybe it's just me, but I think a tank filled with those "boring" corals looks just as nice as a tank with tons of fancy 1/2" pieces. Maybe I'm easy to please

Well I always go back to the old TOTMs for inspiration giant wall to wall reefs of unnamed blue, green, red acros, over slopes of boring euphyllia and acans, with some cheap butt trachys look pretty nice. I'm building this thing for me and guests of my house not macroimages on Instagram. To each their own though, some of the images posted here are unreal with how fantastic the colors look. I just question how they look 5 feet back enjoying the scene sipping on a drink after work.

 

[Timfish]

A fancy name and high price makes more money for the seller.

 

[drcrook]

Wow, this thread blew up quickly. The naming is getting a bit out there; "Splatter Painted Golden Gods Monti" is marketure and not a real indication of a species that is actually rare or not. I can definitely see "breeder specimens" commanding a very high commercially oriented dollar value.

$400 for 10 frags between 1/2" and 1" is not really bulk pricing. I do like the idea of looking for local fish groups on facebook. I'm also seeing some stuff in craigslist.

I went to one of the LFS (there are many in my area) and the corals were way up there in price. You could easily spend $1500 in corals and the tank essentially be empty. Even at the LFS, $700+ for a coral if it were 3".

 

[TheDragonsReef]

15-20 years ago divers would just go down, cut up a huge colony and ship it out for peanuts. But now more and more reefs keep getting closed for collection as the epa and other organizations crack down on protecting the reefs. This is making certain corals collected in these areas much more valuable.

Maricultured coral were then the next thing to combat those new regulations. So now you have people aquiring permits to take frags from the reef instead of full colonies and growing them in a small farm/plot in the ocean. This raises the prices cause now you have people needing to buy permits, and spend the time tending to and growing the corals. These corals are often sold as small colonies and are a good size for the cost

Then you have aquacultured corals, these are grow in extremely clean environments in grow out tanks and are usually the best option for coral in the home aquarium. These corals are already used to the artificial lighting and tank environment and have the highest chance of success in your tank. Most coral farms are also gaurenteed pest free like tsa, wwc, and other large operations. So now youre paying for supplies to grow these corals and the processes require to keep them as clean and healthy as possible. They are often much more expensive than mariculture.

Then toss in covid and now shipping has become a large issue further raising prices.

And finally there will always be the designer and name brand stuff that fetches top dollar. These are often hand picked from reefs by divers looking for only the most beautiful and colorful corals and you will definitely pay for it.