Torch prices?

leewish · Aug 10, 2019

I have returned to the hobby after 4 years of hiatus and shocked by the prices of torches these days. If I only had now what i had back then. My understanding is that it had to do with Indonesia not exporting? Is that accurate? Thoughts if the prices will ever come back down or will only get worse?

Jay Z · Aug 10, 2019

Welcome back!

I kind of feel its like gas prices. Once they go up and people continue to pay for them, they stay high.
They will come back down as the market saturates, but not to what they were. Might drop some more after the new latest and greatest comes out.

Best deals I've found are form members fragging/selling or local deals. Still deals to be found. Just have to keep your nose to the ground.

nden · Aug 10, 2019

Simple supply and demand. I haven't been in the hobby too long, though I remember purchasing torches 6 months ago from my LFS for $40 a head, nothing rare or anything, but still, torch... Used to have quite a stock of them too, now the shop hardly has any in stock, same for hammers.

Join a local reef group on Facebook or something, there are many deals that local reefers may post.

blasterman · Aug 10, 2019

Not too many years ago you couldn't give away euphyllia because they grew so fast in good tanks. $10-15 per head was common in my area for the common types. Every time I bought frags from somebody they tried to give me some, and I won't keep euphyllia in anything but a large tank for obvious reasons.

Unfortunately the real truth is kind of ugly. By now these common, fast growing corals should propagated in domestic tanks vs imported from the wild. The fact is that they are still being imported tells us they are being killed off by noobs in tanks not mature enough to hold them. Every day I see somebody showing off their fancy, multi hyperdimensional spectrum dual processor cloud controlled reef light fixture in a tank with shriveled up euphyllia and bleached rock.

At least we aren't killing off Nemo by the millions anymore.