Here you go again owsi. The average newbie is stunned enough at the price of this hobby. Anyone in the sub-100,000 dollar crowd will not do a double-take when you say a 100G reef tank is 5000 dollars. Not to mention that they will want the tank in-wall. That 5g gets you a minimum reef tank as anyone on reefcentral will tell you. My 240 just in equip probably comes close to 10K, not even counting mis-steps. Not to mention the costs of coral, live rock etc. You want the best of both worlds. You want the stores to take their time to show the latest greatest inventions like they are getting them for free. How much do they need to spend on equip. to show what can be done? The only store in town that has that degree of display tank and that is Majestic. However they have never offered to open any parts of the stand to show what is making that tank look so great. In fact, I am not really sure that they take care of it, since the rest of the store tends to look like a tsunami hit it, IMO. BTW, does anyone in Phoenix have anything major in display tanks? Last time I went up there, ATR was showing Coral life super skimmers and nothing else. Aquarium Arts does have a nice display tank, but they carry only ASM skimmers. I went up there when I was getting my tank ready, specifically to buy a skimmer. I wanted it right then and there. I ended up at Aquatouch, paid retail for an ASM G3. If I wanted an Aqua-C that was large enough for a 240, it was special order. No Euro-reef, no H&S, No precision Marine. I think the only location for a calcium reactor was Aquarium Arts and it was Tunze. Extremely nice but by the time you were done buying it you would be in for a fortune.
Hector carried Euro-Reef in a variety of models. He sold them all, that showed the market to be receptive for 4 skimmers. Then he ran into Euro-Reef customer service.
You say I should know what I talk about. I just came out of a business. To be successful we needed to turn our inventory every 2 months. If you carried 2 calcium reactors @ 300-600 each, in stock, you would then need to sell 12 reactors in 12 months to be on target. That means that 12 people in Tucson would have to purchase reactors from him and not go to the internet, not go to Reefcentral to buy it used or even go to another store, that may or may not have it in stock, or know what it takes to set it up. I had it set-up but did not get it to full efficiency for months. Did I call MRC for help every day? Or did I go to someone in town for advice, even though I did not spend dime one in the store for any of it.
Tucson may have been the first mail-order on-line biz. However does that mean they were shipping all product into Tucson or were they shipping nation-wide in an effort to sell enough items to make it profitable and not a hobby?
I thought you were going to open another store yourself.
