Poor college student

[dafunk5446]

Hello I was just wondering if anyone else out there is a poor college student trying to have a nice reef? I am a full time student (15 Credit hours) planning on getting into marine biology and study coral, and I also work 40 hours a week. I have a single bedroom aprt. that costs me an arm and a leg. A car payment, and classes to pay for. By time all my bills are paid, I have about 40 dollars a month to play with. This really sucks! I live pay check to pay check and I still have another 5 years to go! I can barely afford to buy a frag every 2 months. Typically they are not of the best quality since I can only drop 20 dollars! Does anyone else get upset that coral has to cost so much. I wanted to buy some nice zoo's but everyone I talk to wants $30 a polyp! Then there is shipping to pay for! I would have to save up for 3 months to buy a single nice zoo! Whats wrong with this picture!

[ccorpse27]

$30 a polyp? I can see if they're somewhat rare zoos but you need to start looking at cheaper corals. No sympathy from me, I was a poor college student then and still poor now.

[andrewkw]

buying the ultra rare or just plain trendy corals are going to be expensive, but its pretty remarkable you can buy a coral colony for about $40 that came from an ocean halfway around the world only days or in some cases a day before you bought it.

[dafunk5446]

I wasnt looking for ultra rare or anything like that I was just looking for interseting color combinations, and everyone wants way to much for them. The only reason alot of these corals are "Rare" are because people keep them that way. They charge really high prices for small amounts. I cant wait till I have enough to start selling frags, I will charge dirt for them because I cant understand this. If things keep up there wont be reefs in a few years and people are charging this kind of money for them? That is just stupid in my minds eye. We need to save what coral we have left before it is all gone. I think the best way to do that is spread as much of it around as possible. This cant be done if people want the kind of money the do for coral. Sorry if I am on my soap box, but I just dont get it.

[phenom5]

dafunk,

check out the club forums, and find a reef club that is near you. clubs are a great way to get cheap frags. the last time i went to the local club's meeting/ frag auction, i would buy a frag for 5 bucks, then have the owner give me 2 or 3 more frags because he/ she didn't want to have to take anything home. i came home with a little over a dozen or so frags, and only spent 40 bucks...and the only reason i spent that much was b/c i bought a a. nana frag that cost $15. sure, everyone had the really "rare" frags that were still sold for a pretty penny, but most of the "cheap, please take these because i need more room in my frag tank" frags were still nice pieces.

HTH :thumbsup:

[SuperNerd]

guess it depends on what you consider "nice." if you are more interested in the fact that corals are in the tank and doing well rather than beautifully colored and doing well then there are a lot of corals out there that you can get. besides, when you first start out it's sometimes better to start with less expensive corals.

i agree with asking other reefers too. in fact i bet some of those expensive corals at the lfs sometimes come from reefers' tanks.

[dafunk5446]

Thanks for the ideas, I really should look into joining a club and finding frag swaps. I guess I just wish keeping coral wasnt so commericalized and a pseudo statis symbol sort of thing.

[LobsterOfJustice]

Nah, its not all like that. You can find cheap frags. Those zoas are what are considered LE's, its kind of the collector's side of the hobby. Many people give away zoas, xenia, gsp, and mushrooms for free. On a side note, personally, I like that the hobby is so expensive. Its kind of a built in safeguard that people take it seriously. If saltwater stuff was as cheap as freshwater, there would be nothing left in the ocean by now. [Most] Coral is harder to take care of, so there are higher losses, and it is slower to grow and reproduce.

BTW, I'm a poor college student too. But I worked 20 hrs a week throughout high school and got most of the big purchases out of the way then. Once the tank is up and running there is much less to spend on it.

[ryan_paskadi]

Im a poor college student and ill I can say is student loans all the way.

[LockeOak]

I'm a poor graduate student working in the field of coral reefs, and it is hard. By far the best advice is to join a local club. I've only ever bought one coral from an LFS, and that was a $10 accidental acanthastrea frag. I stocked my entire 10G nano with 5-6 zoanthid frags, mushrooms, two monti caps, a green slimer, a frogspawn, xenia, stylophora, pocillopora, two digis, a sinularia and ricordea while never paying more than $15 for a frag, maybe $125 in coral for the whole tank. Just join a local club and keep an eye on the forums for deals, often people will give things away to newbies. It's also handy if you need a tank sitter for a few days.

[Rustylugnuts]

nother vote for forum deals. bout 6 weeks back I snagged 5 softie frags for 20 bucks (couple frags were tiny but healthy). The xenia has already trippled in size and the zoos and mushrooms are fat & happy. That and you can get the 6500k daylight bulbs with cheap reflectors @ wally world to scrape you by till the T-5's show up.