MR frag sharing program... "Don't break the chain"

[Mr. Ugly]

I think all you need is a separate forum on this site. Then let whoever starts,...start. Whatever qualifications they put on their offering,...so be it. No rules except a basic understanding of the Pay It Forward concept.

Yep, just keep it simple. That's how we did it at BAR.

You don't even need a separate forum at first.

Each person with a coral to give away can just start a thread.

Maybe something like:

---

MR DBTC - Purple Death Paly

I have a PD paly to give to a MR member. Please take it and grow it out and pass on at least 2 frags to a fellow member for free!

Please post back to this thread when you are ready to pass on the corals you have propped

---

Someone can move all your MR DBTC threads to a separate forum after it gets set up.

Hmmm... maybe I should post a coral here

 

[RyanG]

Guys and Gals this is one of the best ideas I have seen since I started getting into the hobby in January(supernoob I know). This is the kind of program that every site/reefclub should have. If you cant be trusted by your word then shame on you but when I get set-up and growing out Im definately in. IMO it really shouldnt matter if the coral is a lowly doodoo brown zoa or a LE one of a kind SPS. This should be all about hooking up a fellow hobbiest with something he/she wants or needs. If the hobby as a whole took this approach think of what it would do for reef and marine ecology! Huge ideas start small, IM DEFINATELY GAME. Sorry for the neo-hippy rant.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Done

http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum...621-mr-dbtc-purple-death-paly.html#post440031

 

[Mr. Ugly]

What Ryan said.

We all can spread this to other clubs!

 

[jejton]

Yep, what Jim said.

You don't want to be in the position of having to force people to behave in a particular way.

If you can start with a small group of people that believe in the vision of the program, you can grow it from there.

It's as much about growing the kind of community spirit that you want, as it is about growing the animals

Glad you all are talking about doing this!

Ditto. This really sounds like a great program and there already is some of this stuff on MR. Perhaps a good way to start would be to keep it limited to MR donors since we are not an official club with dues but rather an open society. It might help weed out the nogoodniks from the program ( and of course raise money for MR ). Or perhaps ( Josh or mods chime in if this is feasible ) convert MR to an official club with dues but still keep the website open to all.

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Gresham and I were talking about this at the swap, and I brought up another forum had a zoa thermos that they sent around. Man that thing went all over the country. The only thing was after you got it, you took out what was in there and then you put some zoas from your tank in it and mailed it to the next person on the list.

This Idea of the DBTC coral is a great idea in conservation and in sharing in the interest of the hobby, and like stated before in the tradition of how MR was started. I do however have a small problem, I would love to be in but I am never comfortable shipping livestock. I feel like it will kill the frag. But that is the only problem I have. Call me kooky I guess but Mailing living things worries me LOL.

 

[RyanG]

The nice thing about this site is that the majority of it is fairly local unlike RC etc. From what Ive seen Im one a handful of posters that is out of the general tri-state area

 

[latino277]

Hey chief.... you don't have to ship the coral.... just donate your piece to someone local.

 

[jhale]

Or perhaps ( Josh or mods chime in if this is feasible ) convert MR to an official club with dues but still keep the website open to all.

lets get the MR DBTC forum created first and take it from there.
I think before any trading is done people should read fully what is expected of them so there are no mis-understandings.

BAR has gone through the trouble of creating a nice set of guidelines, so it won't be that hard.

Maybe one of them can be the official DBTC advisor to MR. any volunteers? :splitspin

 

[Chiefmcfuz]

Hey chief.... you don't have to ship the coral.... just donate your piece to someone local.

I totally understand that but if someone in an area far away wants a piece I feel bad about saying no to them. If someone is willing to help with the shipping stuff for scaredy cats like me than I am so definitely in.

 

[latino277]

I had a `6" orange monti cap and 2 heads of hammers that I can donate.... I'll wait for the offical forum to post tho... As jon stated, I think we should have some guide line even if there simple...

 

[latino277]

I totally understand that but if someone in an area far away wants a piece I feel bad about saying no to them. If someone is willing to help with the shipping stuff for scaredy cats like me than I am so definitely in.

I agree... I have a hard time shipping live stock...but I'm sure you can someone to help or ship for you... and if you can't then it's perfectly ok to tell the person no. I know it sux... but the health of the animal comes 1st.

 

[Thales]

A huge part of BAR starting DBTC was to make it simple and partly to get the behind the scenes trading out in the open. If you don't want to ship, don't! Put it right in your 'requirements' of your initial post. Most of our DBTC get delivered at BAR meetings, or 'meetings' that pop up because a bunch of people are DBTC'ing and decide to get together either at someone house or a LFS.
All the idea of tracking came later - the initial program was started quietly just to get people in the right frame of mind. It started slowly, then caught on with a vengeance.

Sure there may be people that abuse it, but they will get weeded out pretty quickly as others catch on.

 

[Chris5]

The central park trade thing sound interesting!
Will there be sales or is it just for trading??

 

[GreshamH]

I totally understand that but if someone in an area far away wants a piece I feel bad about saying no to them. If someone is willing to help with the shipping stuff for scaredy cats like me than I am so definitely in.

I think it's not all that odd you don't want to ship stuff. It's not something to take all that lightly and like some one just said, the animals health comes first...whether that animal be you or the coral . Sweating a shipment sucks...I been doing it for years and I still sweat each one and I am elated when it all goes right

 

[Ibn]

Glad to see that you guys have started.

Nothing from me since I'm still rebuilding, but I'll be happy to share some of the wealth over here as well once I'm up and running again.

BTW, you really don't have to put whole colonies in or anything. Frags works very well, especially when you have a little tank like I do, and enjoy watching things grow in.

 

[tuberider]

I think it's not all that odd you don't want to ship stuff. It's not something to take all that lightly and like some one just said, the animals health comes first...whether that animal be you or the coral . Sweating a shipment sucks...I been doing it for years and I still sweat each one and I am elated when it all goes right

No doubt Gresham, I feel your pain, as the responsible party in regards to the "BAR box", I was a little nervous.

A couple of points from someone who's given a TON of coral to the BAR DBTC program.


I was more nervous sending coral to MR than I would be giving a complete stranger through the DBTC program. Not only do I have somewhat of a clue where it's going, I can make sure there is some accountability, as well as providing help if thew person has a problem.

Sometimes (much of the time in fact) I cannot give coral away, the DBTC program has made coral so open and abundant, people have become gun shy on anything but the X-treme program we have.

Remove $$$ from things and people become much more civil.

And best of all, tracking software is very close to being developed. Soon we (and perhaps MR) will have a the ability to see what's available in the chains and select what they want based on, well... what they want, and what's available. Everyone will be able to see who donates what, and be able to give donors credit, along with knowing who received what in case of a crash or RTN event.

I worked on the east coast in LFS all over the Philly area (go Flyers), I don't see people being any different there than here, sorry, we've interbred enough by now. As Norman (Mr. Ugly), Rich, and Gresham have stated, it's a matter of starting it and ironing the kinks out as you go along.

 

[NYreefNoob]

this really isnt something you are trading in chris, it's more like here id like to see this continue to grow, to share and save the natural reef. in basic form, really think before people start to just donate, really read their site to get a idea of what it is all really about.

 

[Mr. Ugly]

Yah, DBTC isn't about trading.

It's about getting people to propagate and spread corals and good will.

It's done in a public forum so that you can keep track of when people follow up and return succcessive generations to the program.

It gets pretty fun when people can see how many generations of frags have been grown, or how many items they have returned to the program.

 

[MikeSF]

Hi guys, hope you don't mind the deluge from SF Bay Area residents on your board, I'll try to not make too many waves, but having seen this thread I felt the need to respond.

I'm not going regurgitate what the other BAR members have already said (well ok maybe a little bile), just give you a little background history to give some indication of how our program evolved. And if you're disinterested simply scroll to the next message and I won't feel offended

Initially I was at a BOD meeting (Board of Directors) where the idea was being tossed around, I thought to myself, no way in hell this could work,I mean ok Xenia will prop like crazy, and maybe even LPS corals compared to how slow some SPS seem to grow, so how could this ever work? But being a bit of a masochist I volunteered (along with another member) to head up a subcommittee on it, basically be a moderator of the sub-forum.

Initially it started with some common stuff, some less common stuff, occasionally some "nice" stuff started popping up. (By nice, I mean something that I don't consider THAT common, i.e. go to ANY store in the area and you can get it that day common).

At this time I was keeping track of stuff, trying to figure out who gave to who, how many corals certain people got, and how many they gave out, and from this "position on high" (which btw anyone could have done if they looked at the sub-forum) and could see if anyone was "abusing" the system, and what not, and while it appeared some were taking way more than they were giving, I decided not to post that info (even though I really did). I may have been a moderator, but the success of this program seemed to hinge on lack of intervention at any level. I did how ever post glowing reports about those who did put in, like top three who gave the most frags, frags that went the most generation, etc.

Some time later I decided to quit, around the same time new BOD members were coming in, but my job as a teacher seemed to be getting larger and larger as a commitment standpoint as I taught more classes. Others stepped up to the plate and have exceeded everything that I've done. It wasn't any single person's program that hinged on what they did, in fact if I did nothing it still would have went off fine.

Since I heard the LE mentioned I have to mention it here. "LEs" (now this is a very generic term, I'm not going to rant about... just label as "rarer" for now) did pop up occasionally, but then one day, one person tossed up a ton of really cool frags, not all of them had the Tyree stamp of Expensiveness however they were definitely not common by any means. Initially a lot of "ooh I want" popped up. But then something neat happened, a lot more "really cool" frags popped up from other members, and more and more, until (very shortly after) the DBTC "Xtreme Edition" came into being as an official sub-forum.

Now the thing you might think, is everyone would be messaging like crazy, IV of coffee so they stay up all night and constantly refresh the sub-forum looking for new potentially crazy insane corals. But almost the opposite happened, greed of wanting everything rare almost stopped, and some people had hard times giving away corals! People who did get corals (I got a couple favia and a couple aussie lords) often said something along the lines of "wow that's cool, but I've taken enough so far, I'll let someone else in on it, I'll wait for 2nd or 3rd generation", and it seemed even though "the best" stuff was shooting out there, the spirit of what this program was about seemed to be set in granite, and it's only around two years old

So the moral of this story, and I apologize for the long message I tend to rant/soapbox on any message board I talk about (the teacher side in me ), is that initially it might not seem like it's working, and might fail but given time it can work. Now culture differences aside, it might work different, in fact I'm almost going to guarantee it'll work different since you have (I think) more members active in your forum than we do in ours. But it's something that can turn out, in time, to be quite a nice thing, and the reason I'm saying this is people getting too excited about it early might have to wait a bit for the dividends to pay off

Thanks for your time
Mike
BAR Member