Its gigantea season!

[phender]

For those of you that have been waiting for a gigantea carpet. (Hopefully you are very experianced). A large number made it into California this weekend. The stores that tranship directly and most the wholesalers recieved a large number of blues and purples and a few greens. You should start trolling your LFSs.

 

[catastrofe]

LA has a couple of blues posted at $300 a pop. . .

 

[phender]

I figured they would since they get most of their Diver's Den stuff form one of the wholesalers out here.

LA's price is about 2x what I am seeing at the LFSs around here.

 

[OrionN]

Seem alot cheaper at reefhotspot.com
http://reefhotspot.com/store/specials.php

 

[GSMguy]

Mihn does reef hot spot have a 14 day guarantee? thats why LA gets away with those prices

 

[Flighty]

is it magnifica season yet?

 

[phender]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10506106#post10506106 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Flighty
is it magnifica season yet?

Maybe, I just got this little one at my LFS.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1179208

 

[Big Brother]

i just got this guy at a local fish store for an amazing price.

hes about 5 inches and very sticky and eating already. he was only 40 bucks .

he may be a mertensii though, i havent checked his spots yet

 

[Jovreefer]

holy cow what a steal! Onyx always look so nice rubbing in blue & purple

 

[phender]

Very nice! I like your clowns too.

I can say with a lot of confidence that you will find blue or purple dots, (if you find any at all) under your anemone. You have a gigantea. If you ever see a mertensii in person there will be no doubt as to what it is.

The wholesale price on giganteas, especially small ones, is not very high (even blue ones). Most mom and pop LFSs simply do their normal markup. Your LFS marks up about double their price. That is on the low side of normal. Its when you get into the online stores or the stores that really pay attention to the trends, that you get the huge markups. They are dealing with a larger market and they know that someone will pay it.

I'm not sure if this is kosher, but the normal wholesale price for a large 9-10" blue gigantea at the place I was at, is $35. For some reason they bumped the price up a bit for this batch to $50 for a large and $60 for an XL.

Keep in mind that if you are a retailer and you order 5 or 6 giganteas, you may only be able to sell one of them, because they die before you can sell them. That tends to cause you to raise the price more than you normally would.

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

SO, would it be safe to say that all the blue carpets coming in now are gigantia?

 

[phender]

I wouldn't say all of them, but all the ones I have seen in the past week or so have been.

 

[marc price]

Originally posted</a> by phender
"If you ever see a mertensii in person there will be no doubt as to what it is."

now that we're on the subject, i haven't seen one but am curious about the threat to non-clownfish in the aquarium? i've read that they have non-adhesive tentacles, where would they fit on a scale of 1-5 with 1 being h. crispa and 5 s. haddoni?
i'd like a carpet but don't want to lose fish to s. haddoni (been there done that), and i'm not so sure that 3 or 4 80w ho t5's/ind. reflectors would do for s. gigantea (14"d/4"dsb aquarium). i currently have a healthy sebae anemone / 4 x 54w ho t5's/ind. reflectors but have the extra tank length to switch to 5' 80w ho t5's. i don't want to use halides. not in a hurry to get a mertensii, would have to get rid of most of my corals and clams to make room for one. just thought i'd ask.

 

[Heterodonut]

Man it sucks being on the East Coast and hearing about 40 and 50 dollar blue carpets. A brown Haddon costs 40 to 80 bucks retail here. Green haddon'd run 80 to 150 and blue haddoni are almost never seen, and are a pretty penny when your lucky enough to see one. (I think it was two years and 200 bucks ago when I saw the last one.) True giganteas are even more rare, and I'd have to travel 80 miles and pay 200 bucks for a green one. Never seen a blue gigantea in person. It would be great if a bunch of us from an east coast club could talk a wholsaler into shipping a box or two of those blue giganteas east.

 

[Jeremy Blaze]

Heterodonut

Where are you located?

 

[55semireef]

I agree with Heterodonut. You rarley see Blue Giganteas down here in the F-L-A. All I have ever see was a green one. Man I wish I was in Cal. Phender, I know you just bought a beautiful H. Mag but are you going to get a Gigantea as well?

 

[triggerfish1976]

There are several factors that keep us east coast hobbyists from getting some of the nicer colored Haddoni's and Gigantea's and they are:

1. Poor shippers - Most stores refuse to get them because most will suffer life threatening injuries during transit. Stores usually do not like investing a couple of hundred dollars on something that has a high mortality rate.

2. Holding facilites - Most stores do not have the setups to keep these animals alive long enough to sell them. There isn't a huge demand for these animals and they require very specific habitats to stay healthy, especially the Gigantea's. The greens and browns are more readily available because the investment on them is much lower than other color morphs.

3. Shipping costs - The actual price of these anemones is usually pretty low but they require larger shipping bags and can sometimes take up a whole box so the shipping can price them out of certain LFS budgets.

4. Availability - Blues seem to be available on a regular basis but red and purples are fairly scarce. Unless your LFS can get their's directly from the transhipper or collector they will more than likely be sold to a west coast business through the wholesale companies.

Your best bet to get one is to make arrangements with your LFS to special order one and agree to pick it up the day it comes in and agree to take full responsibility if something happens during shipping. I had to do this when I got my big red Haddoni.

 

[elegance coral]

A little off topic, but have you seen the purple H. Crispa in the divers den? I have never seen one like this. Awesome!

 

[phender]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10524898#post10524898 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 55semireef
Phender, I know you just bought a beautiful H. Mag but are you going to get a Gigantea as well?

Yes, but I was holding off on pics for few weeks until I was sure it was out of the woods.
It is not a classic blue, more of a pastel. It has purple tentacles on the edge, with the inside being more of a teal color. It looks a little like Gary's gigantea. I'll try to take some up close pics when I get home.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

very nice! :bigeyes: