Hey Treeman, hope all is well down in the tropics!
Coralfarmin - Please dont take my prior post as me taking sides, was just butting in with a correction (in my mind) to your post. Believe me, I was once out here a couple times, freaking out on Steve, Mary, and the gang at what I thought was purely an anti-etail stance they had.
I too thought, "Man, these people need to get with the times, etail is much smarter than doing the whole fish store thing that always seems to fail, get slammed online for no knowledge, carry only sick fish and brown corals, and ovecharge out the you know what!"
I knew (or thought I knew) what I was putting into my etail only business at the time was tons of hours and sacrifices and how dare these folks tell me I'm not really doing anyone a favor, and actually hurting the trade.
I took that stuff personally, and reacted emotionally out here. I stand corrected now!
My stance still is that etail is a bit of a necessary evil. Example...a customer of mine may be in the middle of nowhere Iowa, or anywhere USA with no LFS for hours! Maybe not even their fault, but their spouses relocation placed them far from any decent stores. Should they not be allowed to enjoy the hobby ...of course they should...so I think etail is great for those situations.
Flip side that I now see that I didn't before. Is that etail only serves a small percentage of the existing hobbyists. It really does absolutely nothing to expand the hobby and get more people involved. Thats what a good local fish store can do. And that has to happen or the hobby base stays stagnant, or worse, deteriorates.
Anyhow, my thoughts on your last question. No, I don't think a wholesaler that orders some stuff in to sell retail...even etail is wrong as long as they are up front about it. Then it's our choices who to support. I know it may appear they cherry pick just for them...but as a supporter of your implied wholesaler, I know that even us small little stores can order that red yuma, green/red blasto, etc. I really depise the etail giants that dont house or even see their product they sell. And then sell at an ungodly price..that pisses me off, but thats for another day
I too am involved on a project of 35-60 acres of greenhouses, control rooms, and coral gene pooling projects. May be years until its complete, and part of the goal is to be able to re-seed reefs around the world damaged by fishing vessels, over collection, dynamite, tourism, etc. But, our team also counts on the hobby growing, more LFS's opening, etc.
Ok, its early, I need coffee and realize I probably just wrote way too much!
Peace, Bryan
