People making a killing off zoanthids

[Hexacorallia]

I havent been to active on this site, but I wanna see if anyone else notices this. Over the years ive been in business and involved in the industry, zoanthids have skyrocketed! And its mostly a marketing gig by giving them a unique name in my opinion. But what most people dont realize, is these zoanthids that sell for $10-$50 per polyp are imported/collected from the wild, as colonies, and have a cost of around 10$ per 150-200polyps. Just think its crazy that yesterday i sold 6 bigger colonies for around 120$ and a friend of mine sent me a link to a hobbyist selling 'scrambled egg' zoanthids $15 pp (same zoas i just sold). And what a crazy name to begin with. So this is telling me i should be cutting these up taking macro pictures under purple/blue lighting and selling online.

I need to be on the retail side if people are actually paying that much for zoas. Gheeeze!

 

[nathan1986]

It's a name chase more than anything if you ask me. Most of my dirty cheap zoa's look better than the ones I have that have names. But people always comment on the "named" ones i have in the tank

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[Hexacorallia]

Yea i see that! Been looking at some online sites that sell "collector" zoanthids and how crazy is that. They also have tiny disks with 1-3 polyps and ask for top dollar. Honestly i can say in 9 years of commercially farming corals, wholesaling, marine life dive license, consulting retail stores, I never thought chopping the corals into the smallest form and giving them my own unique name would be reconized as collector corals.

 

[plyle02]

Unfortunately it is the hobbyist that has done this to the hobby, this is not practice in Europe, a coral is just identified by species name, in some cases without ID. But here, the hobbyist likes paying WAY more than they should. Go to RAP next year, you will see, people line up in droves to by a certain branded coral, where another guy in a booth over has the same coral without name, and cannot get people to buy it for 5-10 times less. No hobbyist is being ripped off, they actually enjoy paying a higher premium for branded, named corals, so as long as there is a demand, there will be a seller to make money I have so many corals that are not from a branded name that are the same darn thing, I am sps guy though, lol...

 

[Ted_C]

then the coral magically changes colors when you put it into your own tank under different lighting.

 

[CuzzA]

I learned to stay away from corals with made up names. The most gorgeous acro I ever owned was cheap, wild and brown when I got it. I still don't know what it's called but I have a stash of it for the future.

Zoas grow all over the place. And you're absolutely right that they are purchased by the handful for a couple dollars. If you drive over any of the Bay Area bridges, you're likely driving over thousands of them below.

 

[fcmatt]

If that shocks you Google bounce mushrooms. I guess those came as an occasional freebie on zoa colony rocks years ago.

 

[Japsican]

A fool and his money are soon parted.

 

[Hexacorallia]

You guys cant say it any better.. haha. And yes ive seen the bounce mushrooms and others that go for 200$ + per shroom, which is absolutly insane. They certainly dont cost near that to harvest, or even produce from aquaculture.

 

[TheAquatect]

I'm about to launch a new coral site. We will only sell a rare zoa we call the "dark matter zoa" initial offers of $10,000 per polyp will be considered. These rare zoas, like their namesake, cannot be seen BUT even though the bag may seem empty, they are there. PM me if interested! ;-)

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[Hexacorallia]

Hahaha^^ need a few of those so i can retire early

 

[CuzzA]

Btw, It's been a while since I bought coral, but I used to get my Zoas from Marine Warehouse. They didn't care what trendy name they were called, they just put 15 or so polyps on a frag plug and sold them for around $20-$25. Not sure if they still do that, but when I wanted Zoas, that's where I went.

 

[Daimyo68]

As mentioned, it's the hobbyist that has run prices through the roof. I've never paid more than a couple dollars for a polyp, and quite frankly, won't be do8ng it in the future, but...

Years ago, I bought a frag from a fellow reefer, paid 20 for about 20 polyps. they looked nice, and my few polyps grew into a large colony...

Months later, I'm browsing ebay looking at corals, and come across the identical zoa... hmm... these are selling for huge money...

So I put 12 of them up on another reef website... sold them for $400.... All because some guy put his name on them.

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[Hexacorallia]

Yes i agree! Which is great for the industry to some extent. Another interesting thing, seamatt zoanthids used to be extremely cheap back around 2008 and plentyfull in stores untill a freeze hit the Florida keys and wiped 99% out. I remember seeing patches of zoas 15'x 25' blue, teal, purple, green, and every color in between. After the freeze I couldnt find any zoanthids inshore till about 3 years ago, and even now they are still scarce. Mostly harvest zoanthids from patch reefs now and they are much more difficult to harvest because of FWC's laws of how much substrate can be collected with the coral which makes it impossible to harvest 90% of the crazy zoanthids

 

[cobraz]

What worse than the prices - is now a trend on another popular site is live auctions.
Where a vendor puts up a coral or coral pack with a date and end time.. and Reefers battle each other raising the price .. just like eBay only it worse and in the end - everyone losses including the winner - paying way over what he should have to win a coral - that could die if it does not settle in. I don't get it anymore.

 

[TURKLET0N]

I agree. On FB they also have the raffles. There was one I was looking into. It was a nice pack and 40 entries. You could get 1 ticket for $35, 2 for $45 or 3 for $60. Although it doesn't matter if you buy 1, 2 or 3 tickets it only counts for 1 spot. So the seller is making anywhere between $1400 and $2400 which is crazy.

 

[Seagars]

always the decision to share with fellow reefer friends or screw anyone that is willing to pay what you are asking. we are fortunate here in the tampa bay area to have great stores in addition to great reefers that are looking out for the entire hobby.
Thank you to all that i have met!!!

 

[jokeefe727@aol.com]

"dark matter zoa" looking to purchase 2 of them. Can't find them anywhere.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

Man if you think z&ps are bad go look at sps now. Find a small frag of brown sps and buy it for under a $100 wait a year for it to grow and color up and sell the first 5+ pieces for over $1k. Or saw on a Facebook group a guy selling a frag on an auction site starting bid $1 the price drove up and over $400 in under a hour. I went to his website and saw that frag being sold there for $240. Of course it was out of stock. Why would it be in stock if you could double your price and sit back and say I didn't do anything.

 

[TampaSnooker]

"dark matter zoa" looking to purchase 2 of them. Can't find them anywhere.

I bought exclusive rights in a licensing deal that nets Joe 10% in perpetuity. Sweet deal for all. The Shark Tank crew helped finalize the details. We ship the blank plug and Amazon's drones deliver the negative polyp.