Tips on becoming a designer coral collector

[Proteus]

I started with the mixed reef with most of my sps being monties. When I down graded to a smaller tank I was able to sink more money into better equipment and realized that I can't house some corals due to size of tank from there I had to decided sps or lps. I went for sps as I liked the challenge. I started with frags from lfs and found others in area that were into sps and from there we were able to do larger orders from places like reef raft. From there it's complete addiction.
Though I try to be self sufficient with my hobby selling frags and equip to buy the $$$$ pieces.

[Spyd]

I happened to get lucky.... Very lucky....

Once I decided to get my first SPS to test in my original tank, I responded to an ad on another forum here in Ontario. Turns out I ended up getting them from none other than Darryl (Reefermadness).. You know the one who won TOTM on RC... So, needless to say, my A1 supplier lives 20 minutes away from me and we have become good friends along the way. He has helped me out big time and really answered a ton of questions while I was figuring out the whole SPS route. Definitely owe him for a lot of my success in the hobby and coral selection.

Also, we have the luxury of many, many quality LFS around here that bring in rare pieces. I much prefer tracking which customers get the rare pieces, see if they can successfully keep them, then purchase a frag directly from them. Saves big $$$ than purchasing wild corals and having them die on you. I would rather someone else take the risk and pay them more for a frag if it is doing well than dishing out tons of money to only have a success once in a while.... Wild corals really are a 50/50 gamble.

I would say my success rate for aqua-cultured corals is around 95%. Maricultured... 65% and wild corals 50%... Keep in mind, 80 - 90% of my tank is all aquacultured so you can see just how much easier it is generally to keep aquacultured frags and helps save the coral reefs.