Where did all the great corals go?????????

[dgasmd]

Last fall and spring it took all I had to contain myself from buying all these amazingly gorgeous corals. Every place online had these magnificent corals of all kinds, colors, and sizes. It was breathtaking to go to cquarium. com, reefermadness.us, phishybussiness.com, etc and see all these amazing corals day after day. Sometime in the late spring/begining of the summer, they all went downhill and you are lucky now to find some crappy and sorry looking acro, the same by the way, in just about every online vendor. This has been going on for months and nothing is really getting better. I mean, I used to go to reefscience.com and cquarium.com and be able to spend $1000-2000/week (at least in my mind). The turnover was pretty quick too, so that every 5-6 days they had completely new stock there. It killed me because at the time I was about to move and break down my tank, so I couldn't buy anything.

Where in the heck did they all go?

Who is getting them instead?

Did the pickers and growers in the pacific raped what they had and now there is nothing to be found or grown?

What the heck happened??

 

[mojoreef]

Everyone is waiting for thier cities to renew


Mike

 

[dgasmd]

My god man, this royally sucks hairy a.....

 

[dnjan]

Is there a capacity limit on import licenses, and those limits were reached early this year? (and only the not-so-great-looking corals are left?)

 

[mojoreef]

Yes thier is a limit on cities and cities also has a capacity. It seems like the better places have used up thier cities and now folks are turning to the less quality collectors out thier.
This is probibly one of the reasons if not the main one.


Mike

 

[middletonmark]

Very interesting CITIES observation.

Not sure if the online `coralcopia' is on exactly the same timing pattern as the LFS around here ... though anything decent in the middle of the country here is hard to predict. Seems like the LFS has different `good' periods than the big online people, perhaps different channels/sources.

But all that time [last spring/etc] I was thinking I chose a terrible time to be paying for my wedding [now complete]. That cake could have been some dream orders ... the band + food could have been a tank upgrade to hold them all :lol:
At least the Bonaire honeymoon had great diving, and the CITIES permits will `fill the lots with every make and model to choose from' soon enough.

 

[NaH2O]

Hey middlemark! Welcome to Reef Frontiers!!! Congrats on the wedding!

 

[middletonmark]

Thanks, still married too :lol:. Registered a while ago, but done `lurking' and ready to post.

 

[moonpod]

dgasmd, some of it is cyclical as well. A few months ago there were teardrop clams falling out of the sky at the dealers. Now, very, very few. Just wait, they'll show up again.

 

[dgasmd]

I presume there is a cyclical component to it. I mean, I am sure we can buy up nice corals much quicker than they can grow them. So, ther eis only so many that can be sold before they run out and have to wait for the corals to grow back up and color up. The hot sales (larger numbers) happen more towards late fall, winter, and early spring. While it is getting colder here progressively, it is getting warmer in the places where they are being aquacultured and collected.

There is another component to this too and that is the few that make crazy things happen. For example, last year the crazy thing were the efflo and so all of the sudden every online place had 10 of them at all times and yet they called it "rare". Now the raveis the acanthastrteas, so every other place is getting a lot of echinatas, which have never been unusual to begin with but whose first name is still acanthastrea, and calling them "rare, hard to come by, and unusual" so they can charge lots of money to people that either don't know what to do with money or don't know any better. OK, I'll get off my soap box now.

 

[mojoreef]

You better Aberto before it breaks, lol...ok duck and cover

Moonpod it might be a while before those teardrops come back, the collector pulled a no no and lost his licence, he might get it back but I would imagine it would be a while.


Mike

 

[invincible569]

tell me about it. Everytime I visit an LFS now they have nothing but aquaculture and they dotn look so hot.