Edit a few days later : what is interest in terms of a online order from someone like Adam at Battlecorals?
I'm interested in getting hard-to-find corals like Australophyllia Wilsoni at more affordable prices. Here's my proposal:
* Pool our resources: Contribute $100 each to buy larger, more impressive colonies.
* Source strategically: Tap into vendor relationships or place international orders.
* Frag and share: Host a fun frag swap event to distribute the corals, and give reefers the chance to learn and see what supplies are nice to have for fragging, how to frag corals, how to ID pests,... Sorta like a workshop.
* Club involvement: We could use club escrow funds for the initial purchase, with members reimbursing via PayPal within a set timeframe. This leverages club resources and could boost event attendance!
I think a group of 12 is a good start, with the option for rotation.
Let's toss ideas around – I'm open to handling the escrow or finding other solutions. We can focus on whatever corals you are interested in and obviously I have my own corals I'd like to hunt, but if you have some corals you would like to bring in and color up, or maybe you've been looking for a larger colony of something like a torch or euphyllia, this is a good opportunity to potentially save some money. The contributions can be below $100, some corals we get more bang for buck, and we don't *always* need to ship internationally!
Personally, I think this time of year is the most ideal for shipping coral. It's not too cold, not too hot. Ideally, we would do some group buys May, June, September, and some of October.
Let's build a list and discuss the details!
Name:
Corals or regions you are interested in:
Number of buys per year you are interested in:
Days you are available during the week:
How much you're willing to put into a group buy:
Currently, my primary source of international shipping is LivestockUSA. They have regularly updated lists, and I'm willing to drive down to DIA for the order and deliver it to whoever has the closest ideal holding tank and the space and willingness to hold an event at the time. The most likely days for these orders would be Wednesday or Thursday, so if having a weekend event is more ideal, I can work out a way to keep the corals going for 48/72 hours as a holding tank. Bear in mind, this likely means a water change or two and a investment of time on my part, so I would appreciate it that if we did have such a way of doing that, everyone was on the same page as to how we would do that so that anyone can cite the forum thread and have the directions, bill of equipment, and necessary supplies to be given from reefer to reefer in the event I or a regular person can't do it themselves that week.
Here's a link to livestockUSA to get people an idea of approximate pre-shipping prices. If it's not allowed, feel free to let me know and I will remove the link.
https://www.livestockusa.org/PDFlists.html
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears.
Part of the reason for this post is a lot of the stock I see online is the same stuff over and over. It would be nice to see if we can get some unique club corals, and I have a feeling the vendors are asking for the same stuff over and over on the belief that some things, "won't sell", despite a lack of any effort to grow them out in the first place.
Otherwise I'll probably start saving my money and flying down to Florida or out to California to see what those markets have locally on a yearly basis, as opposed to relying on my web crawlers to find interesting corals for sale.
Have a great weekend! Reef on!!
Kyle O'Neill
I'm interested in getting hard-to-find corals like Australophyllia Wilsoni at more affordable prices. Here's my proposal:
* Pool our resources: Contribute $100 each to buy larger, more impressive colonies.
* Source strategically: Tap into vendor relationships or place international orders.
* Frag and share: Host a fun frag swap event to distribute the corals, and give reefers the chance to learn and see what supplies are nice to have for fragging, how to frag corals, how to ID pests,... Sorta like a workshop.
* Club involvement: We could use club escrow funds for the initial purchase, with members reimbursing via PayPal within a set timeframe. This leverages club resources and could boost event attendance!
I think a group of 12 is a good start, with the option for rotation.
Let's toss ideas around – I'm open to handling the escrow or finding other solutions. We can focus on whatever corals you are interested in and obviously I have my own corals I'd like to hunt, but if you have some corals you would like to bring in and color up, or maybe you've been looking for a larger colony of something like a torch or euphyllia, this is a good opportunity to potentially save some money. The contributions can be below $100, some corals we get more bang for buck, and we don't *always* need to ship internationally!
Personally, I think this time of year is the most ideal for shipping coral. It's not too cold, not too hot. Ideally, we would do some group buys May, June, September, and some of October.
Let's build a list and discuss the details!
Name:
Corals or regions you are interested in:
Number of buys per year you are interested in:
Days you are available during the week:
How much you're willing to put into a group buy:
Currently, my primary source of international shipping is LivestockUSA. They have regularly updated lists, and I'm willing to drive down to DIA for the order and deliver it to whoever has the closest ideal holding tank and the space and willingness to hold an event at the time. The most likely days for these orders would be Wednesday or Thursday, so if having a weekend event is more ideal, I can work out a way to keep the corals going for 48/72 hours as a holding tank. Bear in mind, this likely means a water change or two and a investment of time on my part, so I would appreciate it that if we did have such a way of doing that, everyone was on the same page as to how we would do that so that anyone can cite the forum thread and have the directions, bill of equipment, and necessary supplies to be given from reefer to reefer in the event I or a regular person can't do it themselves that week.
Here's a link to livestockUSA to get people an idea of approximate pre-shipping prices. If it's not allowed, feel free to let me know and I will remove the link.
https://www.livestockusa.org/PDFlists.html
If anyone has any other suggestions, I'm all ears.
Part of the reason for this post is a lot of the stock I see online is the same stuff over and over. It would be nice to see if we can get some unique club corals, and I have a feeling the vendors are asking for the same stuff over and over on the belief that some things, "won't sell", despite a lack of any effort to grow them out in the first place.
Otherwise I'll probably start saving my money and flying down to Florida or out to California to see what those markets have locally on a yearly basis, as opposed to relying on my web crawlers to find interesting corals for sale.
Have a great weekend! Reef on!!
Kyle O'Neill
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