WTB superman monti or watermelon

[aquadog11]

I am looking to get A frag of hopefullyy decent size suprman or watermelon.
Thanks all

[Marcus71]

me toooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!

[johns]

I have a few frags of superman monti

[Marcus71]

sorry, john I didnt reply to your PM, but i can justify 40 dollars for a dime size frag.

maybe aquadog will, he is made of money.

[johns]

I am selling pieces for $35. Most are roughly the same size anyway.

These will go for $60+ for the same or even smaller sized frags online (how about $100 from here: http://www.atlantisaquarium.net/frags3.html).

Heck, even the local place where I bought mine in IL wants $60 for a frag. It doesn't seem that unreasonable. But thats fine - I am open to trades too.

[TropTrea]

Originally posted by johns

These will go for $60+ for the same or even smaller sized frags online (how about $100 from here: http://www.atlantisaquarium.net/frags3.html).

I browsed that site and could not believe some of there prices. Nice corals but if you stocked a 120 gallon tank with there corals you would easily have get $3,000 in corals and still have a tank looking half empty untill everything started growing.

They did have a couple LPS corals I relay liked but prices were all $200.00 and up.

Dennis

[johns]

I browsed that site and could not believe some of there prices. Nice corals but if you stocked a 120 gallon tank with there corals you would easily have get $3,000 in corals and still have a tank looking half empty untill everything started growing.

They did have a couple LPS corals I relay liked but prices were all $200.00 and up.

Dennis

Yeah, they are definitely very expensive. I have shopped there a few times now and again, but not very often. In most cases, I couldn't justify their prices either, but in some instances, you get what you pay for.

Kind of like that place a little southwest of Chicago that some people like to frequent that cant be mentioned here anymore. Higher prices, but exceptional stuff.

[Gem Tang Rider]

Corals are like any other item for purchase. A Porche will always cost more than a Volkswagon.
$35 for a dime size piece of a true superman monti is a lot less than what I paid for mine. I have also seen cheaper monti's sold as superman monti's, but weren't the real macoy.

[TropTrea]

It all breaks down to supply and demand. How rare is it? How many people want it? What are people willing to pay for it? Note this place is in California. So first off there overhead is higher than here, and secondly the California market gets higher prices for almost anything they sell out there. At one time the Cost of Living Index for some parts of California was twice what it was in Wisconsin.

Then if you look at hobby in California more people have salt water tanks than freshwater tanks. Therefore there damand is also up. Anyone selling even full sized corals in Wisconsin at prices like that would starve themselves out of business. There simply are not enough customer here willing to spend that kind of money.

[Gem Tang Rider]

Originally posted by TropTrea
It all breaks down to supply and demand. How rare is it? How many people want it? What are people willing to pay for it? Note this place is in California. So first off there overhead is higher than here, and secondly the California market gets higher prices for almost anything they sell out there. At one time the Cost of Living Index for some parts of California was twice what it was in Wisconsin.

Then if you look at hobby in California more people have salt water tanks than freshwater tanks. Therefore there damand is also up. Anyone selling even full sized corals in Wisconsin at prices like that would starve themselves out of business. There simply are not enough customer here willing to spend that kind of money.

Are you saying people in Wisconsin are cheap or just poor??

[TropTrea]

Well if you had the same job you have in Wisconsin odds are you would earning more money. Then there are the movie stars etc in California that do not know what to do with there money.

It is just two completly different worlds.

Originally posted by Gem Tang Rider
Are you saying people in Wisconsin are cheap or just poor??

[Gem Tang Rider]

Does a Porche cost less in Wisconsin? Maybe a little bit, but not half as much.

[Marcus71]

this is a hobby, not lets make as much off a fellow reefer and not help build a great bond between others and not help the less experience out.

when i frag or get frags from others, i instantly email or call others and say hey, here is what i got come pic some off.

i found that there are a couple reefers out there that are here to help build awesome tanks, they are as follows

RTBM Chads Dominga Thorium Nait002 hahnmeister and myself

they hook you up with big frags and advice and even come to help you out with equipment.

I dont care about 35 40 bucks i dont care about a porche, i care about reefing, i mean how hard is it to snap a pc of monti off or any other coral, but then charge someone half or a quarter of what you paid, you get 3 buyers and they just paid for your coral, this is supposed to be a hobby, not a profit.

so say what you wish. i am here to sell low price frags so that people can do the same, i will take the wallet hit, as long as i can spread the frags to others so they dont have to pay the price.

peace out yo

[TropTrea]

Probably not... But a higher percentage of California residents drive Royces, than in Wisconsin.

Originally posted by Gem Tang Rider
Does a Porche cost less in Wisconsin? Maybe a little bit, but not half as much.

[Thorium]

Thank God I got put on the good guy list J/K

Actually Marcus you raise some interesting points here. This is a hobby and most of the people in the area are exclusively hobbyists. I can understand selling frags for money to offset electrical costs / water costs / (maintaining the spousal acceptance factor for some members -you know who you are). I for one would rather trade, but in some instances money is fine, goes towards my salt fund where I usually ask $10-15 for frags. Some of the time I give them out for nothing depends on my mood. Now, Im not going to play the oblivious role here I know there are individuals out there who have a reputation for charging in my opinion ridiculous amounts for frags. But thats their prerogative. If they can get what their asking, God bless. Otherwise all you have to do is say not interested and leave it at that. Thats my rant for now.

[johns]

i mean how hard is it to snap a pc of monti off or any other coral, but then charge someone half or a quarter of what you paid, you get 3 buyers and they just paid for your coral

Well this thread is getting pretty stupid, but if you are interested I paid over $120 for the superman monti I bought. You do the math.

It was not a frag, but a piece about the size of my thumb with a big awkward looking base. I had no intention of breaking it apart originally, but I did something stupid. I didnt like the way the base looked on the thing, and I decided to try to break a couple of pieces off of the bottom so the whole thing looked more 'natural' where I wanted to glue it in. Well, I wound up killing the majority of the piece from what I did. All I was left with was the about 6 pieces from around the base, all around the same size. The main piece (probably 90% of the coral) is still in my tank, but is pretty much a-goner.

And all the talk about making a profit is outrageous too. I didnt turn around and post to sell any of the pieces from the base I had left upfront. I waited about 3 months until I knew all were established and encrusting again. Then I found 2 I wanted to keep for myself, sold one off (it's the only one I've sold, and for the exact price I posted here - $35), and killed another piece in the process.

$35 from a $120 coral isn't what I would call much profit. And even if I sold the other 2 pieces (personally I'd rather trade), there wont be any profit to be had. In fact, it's doubtful I'd ever even sell another piece off of the coral once these last couple were traded off or sold. I'd rather let the coral frags I am keeping grow out.

[Red Sea Purple Tang]

Hey Jon! If you still have a frag, I'll take one...just 'cause I don't have one of those California Porches.

[hahnmeister]

Oooo... this is ugly. You know, not everyone sells off colonies of millipora and prostratas at $20-30 a pop. I happened to need the room, and wanted it fast, so I dropped my pants. Could I have sold those pieces for 2x as much... most likely yes. Heck, I bet if I had charged $50-60 per colony, then a whole other flock would line up... the 'cherry pickers', its just that then I would have had to wait longer, and each person might only take one or two corals rather than 4-5 at a time.

Its just supply and demand guys, and WI is a mostly blue-collar area, so these things cost more to the average Joe, esp considering we are 'in the boondocks' compared to say... Cali. Most of those colonies at Atlantis I know come through San Fran, and the wholesellers there can sell you the same stuff as a whole colony for $30... its just that all the cherry pickers like Atlantis come through and pick them out and post pics of them, and then add another level to the selling and distribution of the corals, so the prices go up again. Take a look at the average Cali reef... their 'regular' pieces are what we consider 'rare'. Thats because they get to scoop them up locally at 1/4-1/3 the cost. You want cheaper corals? Move to LA/SF.

Cost of living is just different in different states. Here, we might pay 1/3 to 1/2 our income for housing (rent, mortgage, etc). Cali, it might be 3/4 or more since the cost of housing is higher. The thing is, the remaining 1/4 they have might be 2x what we have left over because the rate of pay is about 2-3x as high. So they have a smaller proportion of 'expendable income', but more of it. Also, even though housing costs more, other things like Milk, Fruit, etc... are dirt cheap there... they are grown there! And most goods are cheaper as well... cars, livestock, etc... because it all comes through the west-coast (even container cargo from Germany can come through SF/LA rather than East Coast). So being on the west-coast has its advantages.

Look at me, sure, I can order direct from Surya/Indo, or a Wholeseller in HI, but the problem is that in the end, I have to have someone in SF/LA pick it up, repackage it, and reship it to me, adding another $50-some to each box right off the bat. That means a $50 bellus angelfish just went up to $75 just because of where I live. That sorta sucks.

Other cities like Atlanta are just plain booming (where Milwaukee has been considered a dying city since WW2 when the industry started moving out), and the boom means alot of well paid people. When I was down in Atlanta, I saw a 'mini-meeting' of the Atlanta Reef Club at Cappucinno Bay, and members of the club were dropping $300-500 on corals right in front of me. There was a trophy wife who walked into one place and plopped down a $10,000 check for a 240g reef to be set up and maintained in her home... she didnt even know a lick about it!

The midwest is a lower volume market. Most companies/retailers try to make it in the east coast and west coast before expanding to the midwest, we are notorious as conservative buyers here... from electronics to dining, from cars to vacations. We spend less, so things cost more... you want cheaper corals, I hate to say it, but buy more. Then LFS's can negotiate better deals and distribution which get passed on to you. If I buy one lineatus wrasse, I will most likely have to pay $200+ dollars. If I buy 24, I can most likely get them for less than $40 a pop (then reshipped through SF so about $50-60 a pop).

[TropTrea]

Having had been in the business localy I have to agree with many parts of what the meister stated.

Look at what it costs to run a small simple store here in Wisconsin. As a quick example I'll use mine as as an example. On the average month
rent 1,500
maintance 400
Electricity and gas 1,200
Labor 4,000
Investment 1,200 (amount I'd get if I left my investment in a bank)
Misc. 800
So you have a total of 9,100 per month just to keep the lights on. This does not include things like advertising.

Now looking at livestock if it is to be the heart of the business which it needs to be today since online retailers are selling below wholesale cost this is what one needs to sell

$9,100 for overhead and $9,100 for incoming stock every month would mean sales needed to be at $18,200 per month to break even. of that $9,100 in incoming livestock chances are 20% is lost so you realy only have $7,280 in livestock to make $18,200, a month. So he needs to mark up his livestock 2.5 times what he paid for it. But if cannot sell $18,200 a month or an average of over $600 a day he is in trouble.

Now compare this to the hobbiest. He is in it primarly for the fun of it. However he does have expanses as keeping a reef is not a cheap propisition. One estimate I heard is that the average home reef costs $100.00 per gallon to set up and stock, plus $2.00 per gallon per month to maintain. Fortunatly we have loads of hobbiest helping each other out and bringing these costs down.

Being able to get $10.00 to $30.00 frags from other hobbiest as opposed to buying full grown corals at stores for $200.00 plus is a big money saver. Yet it helps both parties as giving one person a little extra cash for chemicals as well as reduces that $100 per gallon set up cost the newbie. And to top things off it also helps the stores as everyone knows they cannot live without ocassionaly buying something from the LFS.

Does this make us cheap? No it makes us fugal. Instead of having a 75 gallon reef for $7,500 we can actualy have a 150 gallon for the same investment. Plus through trading frags change the looks of our reef completly every few years.

Now there is one other positive aproach I see. Generaly the hobbiest local swaping frags become limited in varieties. So someone does go out and buy that $200 or $500 coral which no one else has. He keeps this coral for a year or two then and frags it into say 6 corals. Is it wrong for him to expect $35 to $85 for each of these frags and get his investment back? We do have 5 others getting a coral localy at 1/6 of what they would pay for it in a store.

Dennis


Dennis

[steve414]

I dont see anything wrong with the price. Plus he will trade. They go for about $65 a pop in chi-town.This thread is crazy.IMO

[Thorium]

This is a good topic.

I really see no ugliness in this thread, only disagreement. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, this gets more interesting and I'm pleased Trop Trea gave us some stats on his operational costs.

Now, a typical reef shop most likely has those kinds of numbers to deal with and probably higher each month. So for example they may have to sell certain frags for $50 based on their wholesale price and the high amount of money it takes to run the shop.

Now lets step into the fish room of a typical hobbyist. I dont have the retail costs to keep my door open and lights on. So my costs to run my tank are no where near a fish shops. So I cant justify selling frags for the same amount of a fish shop. That $50 frag from the fish shop is probably worth $25 or less when it comes out of my tank.

Now there is supply and demand. Some things are getting more money now and this goes in cycles. But as a hobbyist I feel that we should be trading fairly amongst ourselves to preserve the reefs and reduce the amounts of collections being made. So I almost feel that as I take these things from the ocean I have an obligation to make the healthy growers in my collection available to others. Under this approach we help others who are interested in certain species get a piece from us rather than the reef.

So, yeah it does make me cringe when I see some posted prices for frags. I think some are out of their minds for what they ask. At most I think a hobbyist should ask for a frag is the wholesale price a retailer pays. But like I posted before I know for a fact there are guys out there that have to deal with the spousal acceptance factor to keep their operation going and have coral buying funds from their sales to keep buying new corals and thats fabulous.

But also like I posted before if you dont like the price -walk away from it. If someone doesn't like my price and there have been people I'm not offended, $10-$15 a frag is my mind a reasonable price for most things. There are a few exceptions, sunset montis, supermans, alien warbird zoos, red stags/milli's etc etc. But even then $35 would probably be max for a small frag.

[dominga]

Nice said Thorium.
By the way do you have any frags? I can stop by tonight if you have time. Thank you

[TropTrea]

We keep refering to frags. However keep in mind that the average store does not deal in frags so much as small corals. The average coral that is wholesaled could probably be split into 3 frags. then the average customer is also not interested in frags but he wants something that will look good in his/her tank imediatly. The old desire for instant gratification.

Now lets look at aquaculturing. Yes this is so called futute of the hobby. But if you look at what it realy costs the hobbiest to aquaculture a coral does he have more money invested in it than in if simply bought the coral from a retailer.

then where does one cut that dividuing line from a pure hobbies, to a hobbiest that does aquaculturing, to the comercial aquaculturist. If each of these three are selling a frag I'm sure each would have a different price for that same frag. And everyone of them would be justified in what they are asking.

If you add just a frag tank to your system remember your adding cost in many ways. The cost of the tank, lights, pumps, the larger skimmer higher electric bills and more chemicals. Everyone has a limit on there budget and selling a few frags ocassionaly helps keep those costs in line. But if you think your going to make money at it I think your in for a shocker. If you charged enough to make a profit your prices would be so high that most people would simply walk away.

The only way to make money would be have something that noone could get anywhere else and have a large enough demand to get a premium price.

Think of it like the flowerhorn story. The fist dozen to hit the market at auctions went for several thousand dollars. 6 months later they were getting hundreds of dollars per fish, a year later they were wholesaling at $5.00 each. Sure a coral will not drop that fast in price but it is still supply verses demand.

If 10 people are willing to pay $200 for a coral then it is a fair price. If only no-one wants to pay $20.00 for a coral then it is not a fair price. I personly would prefer to trade if I had something to trade that interested someone.

Dennis

[Marcus71]

i told myself i would not reply, but i cant help reading all the post.
i will not make a book for everyone to read.
short and sweet.

i know why it cost what it does at STORES, but people that are selling frags on here dont own stores. so stop giving us store examples and reasons. We all know what it cost to run a reef, so we cant complain about bills, when we can stop reefing and save money on bills.

johns, coo you bought it for 120, like i said 3 people buy your dime size frag for 40 you made your money back, and guess what you still have a pc to grow and keep making money.

I hope i can get a frag and let it grow for awhile and then sell back to locals for dirt cheap, and keep this hobby alive and strong.

[hahnmeister]

TropTrea, I think there is more of a market for frags than there is for whole corals, esp at the retail level. We dont see it so much here in WI because the stores around here are a little slow in that respect, but even down in chi-town... look at what Sharky's used to do... I would spend $200 on frags before $200 in whole pieces. Down south, several stores have taken to fragging themselves... a few places I walk into have a good portion of the store with nothing but egg-crate and frag plugs filled and ready for sale... often $10-30 a frag.

So I think the demand is there, just the stores up here dont know how to do it.

The thing I will point out, and I think others have touched on, is that when we swap/sell for cheap among ourselves, we are limiting our selection in a drastic way. Over time, I have seen most tanks in this area with the same few corals. When I go to see a new tank I can bet on these few corals being in it:

Pink Birdsnest (thats my contribution)
Orange Whorling Cap
Pink Cap
That blue stag/ brown stag with blue tips
Green Birdsnest
Pink Pom Pom
GSP
Silver Xenia
Purple & Green Shrooms
Green Slimer
Green center, yellow rim zoas
Purple digi
etc.

Its gotten to the point where I cant even trade with anyone in the club except for those few who actually buy corals from sources outside WI...lol. JohnS, Bill, Paul, and sometimes Cory, Josh, and Prugs are the only ones that come to mind. Otherwise, its a monoculture of corals we end up with. Now, while this might be fine for beginners, I didnt buy a nano-cube for a reason! If I wanted to look at the corals and fish that Cindy-Who has, I would just go to Cindy-Who's place. I want the stuff that is unique... the cherry looking stuff that comes through LA... you know? And I have no problem paying for it. But when someone used to trading for GSP comes along and suggests I should break off a piece of that new lokani acro for them in exchange for a frag of pink xenia (that you dont see in my tank for a reason)... I might chase them out of my house! Lol.

Id say superman monti isnt all that rare, but its a slow grower for most, and its not the easiest to frag, let alone grow in the first place. While I might agree that green slimer has almost become a 'freebie' in recent years, superman monti isnt part of the '$20 frag club' and most likely never will be. JohnS's price on that is more than fair. Consider this: rather than making a frag, John could just leave it in his tank, getting more tha $40 of enjoyment out of it by just keeping it.