I talked to a collector who distributes his own livestock today for a while about this industry. Now, hopefully it will make the people that are constantly looking for the cheapest fish/coral/inverts on the internet think twice before choosing price before quality (or even just price period). This really makes sense so heres what he told me. The problem with the industry today is that everone sells wild caught livestock really cheap and with a large turnover. Now, since there is such a large turnover because of the really low prices more and more critters have to be collected to keep up with the new demand. This collector told me he doesn't sell his stuff cheap and this makes sense (to me anyways) because since the prices are higher there is less of a turnover with the same amount of money made but the collector has to collect less critters from the reef, which is always a good thing (talk about a run on sentence and a half). Thus overcollecting is halted. Although people will complain, and do, about the higher prices they take that extra step to learn more about the critter they would like to keep to protect their investment. IME the average customer that enters our store will just ask to buy a coral for 20 bucks even if their system is less than adequate but if that same piece was 60 dollars they wouldn't buy it unless their system was perfect for it. Are you seeing what i'm getting at?
Higher prices = less collecting + reefkeepers that know what they're buying before they do.
Now, this isn't to say that charging 50 bucks for a peppermint shrimp is the right thing to do to prevent overcollecting and make sure that people are more conscientious about keeping them. But the average reef keeper would say "hey, i don't want to pay higher prices, i just want my $5 yellow tang!", but think of it in terms of the reefs and to some extent keeping the lfs's alive.
Flame me if you wish, although some of the above blurb is probably un-understandable and i'll try make some sense of it later.
But bottom line, does this make sense? Would higher prices across the board for wild collected livestock benefit the reefkeeping hobby in general, producing more conscientious (with slightly lighter wallets) reefkeepers, while keeping LFS's in business as well as the smaller collectors?
I'm going out on a limb here, and i'll have more to say.
Higher prices = less collecting + reefkeepers that know what they're buying before they do.
Now, this isn't to say that charging 50 bucks for a peppermint shrimp is the right thing to do to prevent overcollecting and make sure that people are more conscientious about keeping them. But the average reef keeper would say "hey, i don't want to pay higher prices, i just want my $5 yellow tang!", but think of it in terms of the reefs and to some extent keeping the lfs's alive.
Flame me if you wish, although some of the above blurb is probably un-understandable and i'll try make some sense of it later.
But bottom line, does this make sense? Would higher prices across the board for wild collected livestock benefit the reefkeeping hobby in general, producing more conscientious (with slightly lighter wallets) reefkeepers, while keeping LFS's in business as well as the smaller collectors?
I'm going out on a limb here, and i'll have more to say.
