What is your opinion on the hobby's status?

[Bayside Corals]

Originally Posted by jorjef

This comment I believe supports why we are seeing a lot of livestock way smaller then in the past...Few example Fungi plates, Aussie scolly's, some species of fish hippo, yellow tangs, blue green chromis, I saw a six line that I swear was a 1/2" long , maybe even clams.

If the collectors don't have the means or legally can't reach out to new collecting sites I would suggest due to demand the area they have historically collected from doesn't have time to produce the same sizes say... fungi or scollys we were use to in the past... Just a theory.

Smaller sized fish are ordered on purpose because that's what the majority of customers want. If someone is looking for larger fish just ask and they can be ordered. There are no shortage of Larger fish from the collectors. It's just a trend right now where most people either have smaller tanks so they want smaller fish or they have a larger tank but still want a small fish to watch them grow.

When it comes to corals the smaller sizes are due to them being fragged right from the collector so they can maximize profit. Or for the not easily fraggable corals like fungias and brain corals it all comes down to color. They collect only the colorfull corals no matter the size.

In the old days people wanted nice big corals to put in their big tanks (because nano tanks were impossible to keep or not widely known about) So they collected mostly medium to large sized corals but in every color including a large portion of brown corals. It was the size of the corals that used to matter and not as much the color.

Now most people don't care about the size to a point. They just want the newest craziest color possible. It's all about what the customers want. Trust me if customers wanted big brown/average colored corals we could make that happen. but that's not what most people want.