Captive breeding & Aquafarming

[tosiek]

So, after reading the Blog Josh posted http://www.reefs.com/blog/2012/10/23/reefgen-captive-breeding-farming-in-new-york/ I thought back to a convo i had a while ago with some people about coral farming in the US.

Anyways, the basics of the convo was that there are extremely few people dealing with fish/coral farming in the US, the majority of grown frag sales are mainly from peoples tanks, and there is an overly high percent of corals that get imported. You have people selling their frags for very good profits so why hasn't anyone been able to upscale that to a major operation and be as successful as some people are with their tank grow outs in their home tanks.

The major coral farm everyone knows isn't really turning an impressive profit compared to the upmark and sales it does, theres only one or two successful captive hatched fish wholesalers, and a few of the older coral farms now mainly deal with imported coral instead.

Just wanted to start up the convo and get people talking and maybe learning a thing or two. This does deal with the other side of the hobby which is import/sales/wholesale that people rarely see or know about.

 

[Tonyscoots84]

Alot of money in overhead would prob. Be an issue....

 

[tosiek]

As with any basic business you need a good amount of money to make it happen. What makes this different from lets say, a fish store, or bar/restaurant, clothing store, or any other business. Its cheaper to make clothes at home, and if your good you can make good quality and sell for a great profit right. How come there aren't any forums where people make and sell clothing? (there probably is, just using it as a hypothetical)

People are making 500%+ profit off their zoa frags, imagine making 500% x 50+. There has to be another reason aside from simple economic walls thats prevented this from working. If there is a potential to make profit then a business will start up, all it takes is the right conditions. Theres something causing the conditions to not be right. Its not a money issue as far as start up and upkeep.

 

[Widdy]

Capital, time and most important know-how. Not know-how on how to setup a tank/raceway or setup a calcium reactor. Know-how on how to reverse the ship before it runs aground. Hobbyists nowadays have a high tendency of throwing everything that's available on the shelf into their tanks, I myself have been guilty on this on many occasions. A good solid foundation and understanding could avert these actions. When problems arise, our livestock can go south in a moments time, any fix applied can take days to weeks to see any improvement.

That's just the "coral farming/fish breeding" part... then there's the business sense of running a business. Don't need to be a Wharton alumni, but some of the business practices I've personally seen... amazing.

 

[duke62]

Have you seen the coral farms?they are either outside in very large holding bins growing corals the natural way using the suns light and the temperature from where the corals are harvested using water from the oceans. they harvest the corals using permits used for collecting in the ocean which is pretty much no overhead except for a couple people a day going by to check that everything is running alright or ive even seen them harvesting the corals in the ocean itself. Not many places in the US that can do it this way. You can say florida maybe but even there there is cold snaps that can wipe out everything real fast. Alot of overhead when using electricity and man made salts.A lot cheaper doing it the way they are doing it