Selling Corals for Profit $$$

[reefermadness]

Interesting thread.

Personally I will agree with those that think if you are buying and selling for the purpose of profit you are not hobbyist but a business.

I also find this thread interesting for the fact that I just sold all my coral. It was a long process (we are talking thousands of dollars). I had an unbelievable amount of corals for a hobbyist but I never once purchased a frag or colony for the sole purpose of profit. The large majority of my corals were purchased as frags and grown out. This takes the kind of time, resources and care that most businesses cant spare to waste. As a hobbyist though this is the best way to get your money back out of the hobby. I by far did the best on the small rare and/or beautiful (most times aquarium cultured) frags I would buy. In a few years (more or less) they are grown out and you can usually frag them many times to make back investments in the hobby. Of course this takes skill and patience. Much better than the few wild LPS colonies I would buy that do not grow. Nice corals are expensive and even though Jay (reefraft) would seem to give me decent prices (comparitively) if the coral wouldnt grow it would be a money loser in the end for sure. Another thing with selling grown out corals is you are not pushing chop shop corals which have a poorer track record.

Anyway you would'nt believe the growth you can get on some of these corals (certain SPS especially). The growth is nealy exponetial as they grow. So with a large system stuffed to the brink with mature corals I personally was not up to the task of selling all the frags. Thankfully Tony and Long wanted to make a business out of it. They are good guys and we both did well with our partnership. I wholesaled out my frags (till they were ready to buy the mother colonies). Less work for me and these young buck entrepreneurs can make a buck too. They are a registered tax paying business (and sponsor of canreef) as well cause Im sure some eye brows would have been raised had I tried to sell all my wares in the classifieds.

Currently coral free
D.V.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by reefermadness

Im sure some eye brows would have been raised had I tried to sell all my wares in the classifieds.

I don't think so. They're yours, you grew them from babies and were shutting down. I would see no problem with that. Likely easier to do what you did, as selling single frags to empty a tank would take some effort!

[reefermadness]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

I don't think so. They're yours, you grew them from babies and were shutting down. I would see no problem with that. Likely easier to do what you did, as selling single frags to empty a tank would take some effort!

Well Im happy either way cause it was way to much work and in the end it was far from full tank to single frags even (like I said a crazy amount of coral). We dwiddled them down some but MJC still got the mother colonies. Hopefully they can keep them nice and growing.

[Aquattro]

Yup, it's a lot of work. I have a wait list for all my frags, as I can't sell the bases.
And, I have to dip and inspect under the scope each frag for each buyer. Not looking forward to it