Loading ...Between my iPhone and my Amazon Prime membership, there is an awful lot of stuff I can make materialize on my front steps within 48 hours.
Books are easy. I’m ashamed to say I’ve not found what I was looking for in a Barnes and Noble and ordered it from Amazon while I stood there in the store. Holiday shopping was painless. DVDs I’m vaguely interested in have been pre-ordered months in advance to show up as delightful surprises when they eventually ship. Most importantly, most things ship for free unless I want it the following day. I can get things the following day for $4.
This super power has changed the way I live my life.
And it has made me absolutely hate paying to have anything shipped.
Coupled with my small town availability of fish and corals, this creates quite an internal conflict for me.
I’ve got two stores within two hours drive of me.
The easier to get to one is a fair-sized store, but most of the space is taken up by birds, lizards and rodents. Ferrets, while adorable, have no place in a reef tank. Unless you have a really awesome protein skimmer.
The staff is friendly, but made up of mostly chemically-altered college students and high school kids. They are helpful enough as long as the cute dog food rep isn’t there distracting them with her midriff-baring top and a poster about shedding and healthy teeth in older dogs. I really wish I’d made up that last part.
Wedged in the back of the store, the saltwater area features a couple of large tanks and a row of fish cubicles. The corals and fish generally seem healthy enough, but the whole area comes off as dark-looking – almost dirty. Small frags range from $15-45 and larger “show” pieces of common coral tend to hover around the $70 mark.
If I want to drive further (quite a few exits further, actually) I can go to the “nicer” store. This one is just fish, though they have a lot of freshwater stuff and a koi pond by the front door.
The tanks are immaculate, packed with awesomeness, but the staff is, if anything, more distracted than the stoned kids at the first store. These guys are discussing the latest shade of chalice and the appearance it takes on under various configurations of T5 lamps. They are engaging each other about the finer points of pump and skimmer design. They are, quite often, genuinely busy with a bunch of tank cleaning and scooping goldfish. I could wait. Heck, I could join in. But after I’ve dragged my reef-tolerant family across town, they want me to get something bagged up and get out.
Here’s the other thing: Only a select few of the tanks are clearly marked with prices. The most detailed is hanging on a clipboard next to their (admittedly beautiful) frag tank. And those prices are almost physically painful to me.
But online.
Online the same corals are less expensive. I know what I’m paying without asking. And I have a reasonable expectation of quality based on reviews of other hobbyists.
In fact, if I want higher-end corals I really have no option but purchasing online.
But then there is shipping. I’ve got to buy a lot of stuff to justify paying for shipping.
If a local store has a fish I want for $30 (and this is a real world example) and I can get the same fish, labeled as tank-bred even, for $14 online but I have to pay $65 for shipping, then I have to do math to figure out how many fish I need to buy online at once to justify the added expense.
Math is not my super power. My Amazon Prime membership is my super power.
Ugh. Let’s see:
Buying two local fish (providing I can find two, since I’ve only ever seen one) is $60 plus tax or $90 if I want three. Online $14 plus $65 is $79 for one, or $28 for two plus $65 is $93, or less than the local option for three due to sales tax. Buying three fish online, I handily beat the local price.
An added problem is that I tend to really try to get as much junk crammed into that shipping box as possible so the per-item shipping costs are reduced. In a smaller or already densely stocked tank, this problem can be quite severe. I’ve got to save $10 per item on seven items to make $65 in shipping costs not eat away at my (admittedly spoiled) soul.
So then I waffle back towards the local option and look into a tank filled with aiptasia and $6 hermit crabs . . .
High-end, specific quality, aquacultured corals will pretty much always arrive at my house by an overnight service. I can admit that. There are awesome corals I just can’t find within driving distance.
Shipping gets less painful the more stuff I order, both from a math standpoint and, I suspect, through the deadening of some financial nerve.
Once my tank fills in a little more, I’ll be left with smaller orders. For that kind of situation, I recommend a group buy with a local reef club. There is no reason to suffer alone.
Unless, of course, there is no local reef club. Like, for example, here.
In that case, I find that drinking helps. Or as I like to call it, “vodka dosing”.
Books are easy. I’m ashamed to say I’ve not found what I was looking for in a Barnes and Noble and ordered it from Amazon while I stood there in the store. Holiday shopping was painless. DVDs I’m vaguely interested in have been pre-ordered months in advance to show up as delightful surprises when they eventually ship. Most importantly, most things ship for free unless I want it the following day. I can get things the following day for $4.
This super power has changed the way I live my life.
And it has made me absolutely hate paying to have anything shipped.
Coupled with my small town availability of fish and corals, this creates quite an internal conflict for me.
I’ve got two stores within two hours drive of me.
The easier to get to one is a fair-sized store, but most of the space is taken up by birds, lizards and rodents. Ferrets, while adorable, have no place in a reef tank. Unless you have a really awesome protein skimmer.
The staff is friendly, but made up of mostly chemically-altered college students and high school kids. They are helpful enough as long as the cute dog food rep isn’t there distracting them with her midriff-baring top and a poster about shedding and healthy teeth in older dogs. I really wish I’d made up that last part.
Wedged in the back of the store, the saltwater area features a couple of large tanks and a row of fish cubicles. The corals and fish generally seem healthy enough, but the whole area comes off as dark-looking – almost dirty. Small frags range from $15-45 and larger “show” pieces of common coral tend to hover around the $70 mark.
If I want to drive further (quite a few exits further, actually) I can go to the “nicer” store. This one is just fish, though they have a lot of freshwater stuff and a koi pond by the front door.
The tanks are immaculate, packed with awesomeness, but the staff is, if anything, more distracted than the stoned kids at the first store. These guys are discussing the latest shade of chalice and the appearance it takes on under various configurations of T5 lamps. They are engaging each other about the finer points of pump and skimmer design. They are, quite often, genuinely busy with a bunch of tank cleaning and scooping goldfish. I could wait. Heck, I could join in. But after I’ve dragged my reef-tolerant family across town, they want me to get something bagged up and get out.
Here’s the other thing: Only a select few of the tanks are clearly marked with prices. The most detailed is hanging on a clipboard next to their (admittedly beautiful) frag tank. And those prices are almost physically painful to me.
But online.
Online the same corals are less expensive. I know what I’m paying without asking. And I have a reasonable expectation of quality based on reviews of other hobbyists.
In fact, if I want higher-end corals I really have no option but purchasing online.
But then there is shipping. I’ve got to buy a lot of stuff to justify paying for shipping.
If a local store has a fish I want for $30 (and this is a real world example) and I can get the same fish, labeled as tank-bred even, for $14 online but I have to pay $65 for shipping, then I have to do math to figure out how many fish I need to buy online at once to justify the added expense.
Math is not my super power. My Amazon Prime membership is my super power.
Ugh. Let’s see:
Buying two local fish (providing I can find two, since I’ve only ever seen one) is $60 plus tax or $90 if I want three. Online $14 plus $65 is $79 for one, or $28 for two plus $65 is $93, or less than the local option for three due to sales tax. Buying three fish online, I handily beat the local price.
An added problem is that I tend to really try to get as much junk crammed into that shipping box as possible so the per-item shipping costs are reduced. In a smaller or already densely stocked tank, this problem can be quite severe. I’ve got to save $10 per item on seven items to make $65 in shipping costs not eat away at my (admittedly spoiled) soul.
So then I waffle back towards the local option and look into a tank filled with aiptasia and $6 hermit crabs . . .
High-end, specific quality, aquacultured corals will pretty much always arrive at my house by an overnight service. I can admit that. There are awesome corals I just can’t find within driving distance.
Shipping gets less painful the more stuff I order, both from a math standpoint and, I suspect, through the deadening of some financial nerve.
Once my tank fills in a little more, I’ll be left with smaller orders. For that kind of situation, I recommend a group buy with a local reef club. There is no reason to suffer alone.
Unless, of course, there is no local reef club. Like, for example, here.
In that case, I find that drinking helps. Or as I like to call it, “vodka dosing”.
Garrick has no memory of his birth parents, having been abandoned at the South Plains Mall in Lubbock, Texas as an infant and raised in shifts by the kindly part-time staff at World of Pets and Orange Julius.
He currently lives in South Carolina with his wife and daughter and four cats and has had at least one saltwater aquarium constantly since 1991.
i feel your pain , you described my situation to the “t” . i may have to up my vodka dosing …. possibly even a two part !
I’ve found that rum works well too. But once I overdosed and became president of a local club. Now I solicit local business for sponsorships while whispering in club members ears to go online for high end stuff.