WHere dose coral come from.....= p

THis goes out to the senoir Mods.......
Ive worked in the aquarium field (lfs petco ect) for over 3 years now. Even though I would assume i know more of the trade than the average aquarist, Im still confused by a few things.
I know where all the LFS get thier goods both dry and live.....the only LFS that gets a different dry good connection are the asian shops in frisco which must have a direct import of thier goods, literally, ive seen some crazy stuff there.
Most LFS i know of get thier goodies from the same local people, literally 4 stores i know of off hand deal with the same folks. THis is what confuses me, It seems that most of the dist.'s get waves of the same type of coral, IE
world of pets, sea, and all about fish ALL have the same sun corals for sale right now...not just the same species but form the same area, i can tell by the substrate they are attached to and the fauna on it. Yet they came from differen dist.'s in different areas. Are there any truly independant dist. who get exclusive livestock? It seems i only find those places online as every area ive everlived in has generally the same livestock at certain points and sometimes the EXcat same stuff from different companies. I guess my q has evolved now that im really thinking of it....Is there a MAIN dist/collector that supplies the west coast or something? It seems like all the local companies i know of are connected in some way, maybe not by partnership but through who they buy from in the very begining of the process. Are there any sites i can goto to reveal the chain of command....? Is there any info on this at all, or would it be harmful to buisnesses if it was known....the reason im asking is well.....im board and nosy.;D

 

I know im not a senior mod ...but this is interesting...are you asking who is at the end of the road? meaning...where specifically are the corals being harvested from? or are you stating that there are larger puppet master companies that control certian companies

 

In a way....sort of but in an inquisition rather than a statement. I just want a deeper insight to the actual chain of events as in the "head hauncho" of fish distribution....are they all connected, is it a giant mafious somewhat underground fish world......or am i just that bored........

 

What typically happens is. The Large Wholesale companies bring in large orders from one part of the world. could be they have a collection area of there own or have sent people to look at the coral. When this order arrives it is laid out in massive holding tanks. Like we sometimes do to our LFS there are LFS waiting for the order. Maybe not LFS but other wholesalers from out of State or what every. It then becomes first come first serve. Whit the big internet retailers getting a lot of attention as they move a lot of stuff. Typically LFS place orders via fax or internet with these wholesalers. The Wholesalers do there best to fill the order with what the LSF wanted but often the product did not come in or had already been sold. So often filler coral are subbed in order to meet the dollar value.
You can imagine that a wholesaler would receive a lot of one type of coral as it would be an order that came in from one region of the world.

Hope this helps
Jason

 

Thanks Jason...
Curiosity and boredom are killing me.

 

I wrote that at 6:30 I hope it made sense.

Gresham used to be heavily involved in the Wholesale business he may correct a lot of what I said

J