Yep, that is just wild harvest colonies, nothing wrong with those if they are reasonably priced. "Chop Shops" take those harvested pieces and break them further into 1" or even smaller pieces and sell them for a premium
Why do wild harvested corals get the derogatory term "chop shop"?
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I think that the term "chop shops" is in reference to people who take wild colonies, cut them up into little frags, give them a crazy name, and ship them out before they have a chance to heal. Nothing wrong with sustainably harvested wild corals, fragging happens in the wild all the time as a result of fish and weather. I've never heard the phrase used to describe collection.
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Ok, that's pretty messed up to say the least. Where I am a majority of the corals come straight from Indonesia (a few are aquacultured i believe but not many). A lot of the shops offer the corals in large pieces though instead of chopping them up like they do in some places apparently.
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Where you live is an entirely different world (from the US/Canada) with regard to the type of coral available as well as the prices... You're lucky
There are very few places like this in the US. Even no named acro species would sell very quickly in colonies, but the money is in the 100 dollar little .5 inch pieces.
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Ok, i understand now, it's more of a term to describe the shop as opposed to the collection method. I've definitely heard people criticize the collection of wild corals and the shops that sell wild corals as chop shops regardless of whether or not they chop them up and sell for ridiculous prices which is why I was wondering.
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I really do count myself lucky to be located where i am for this hobby...the cheap ocean live rock and a lot of coral prices are amazing. I really would probably not be able to participate in the hobby in other places.
Where you live is an entirely different world (from the US/Canada) with regard to the type of coral available as well as the prices... You're lucky
oh boy do we envy you in that regard lol.
As almost anyone knows, prices in the US, UK, and Canada have skyrocketed to astronomical proportions in the last few years. Cant even get a green chromis under 15 dollars in alot of places now. That should speak for itself.
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I'm more envious of the selection of coral ... Even if the prices were as high as here, you just don't see many cool things like Christmas tree worm rocks, etc... At least not at any of my LFS.
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I prefer to buy the corals that have encrusted over the frag plug here since freshly imported corals don't do well according to others and it's been my experience as well. I'm about to get this strawberry shortcake since it looks healthy and is well encrusted over the frag...that shows me it's been in captivity for a while at least and adjusted well enough to grow
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Customer service certainly isn't great most places but that's everywhere in the world...for example i ordered some live rock to be delivered from across the city and asked the guy if he could please just weigh it...not a chance he'd go through the trouble of putting it on a scale apparently. On the opposite end of the spectrum i had a shop owner give me a free healthy Porites coral with Christmas Tree Worms last month! But yeah, the selection is really awesome and you never know what's gonna be in stock next. While i am a fan of aquaculture, there's just a special feeling when all the corals are unique and aren't lined up in rows of ten identical pieces.
Over here in the US, if it doesn't have at least three colors and a long name, it is very hard to sell a coral. Lots of sellers just photoshop the colors in and come up with a name to sell common and fast growing corals at 50$+. It's actually hard to find "common" and easy species, everyone wants the expensive acro/torch that glows like the rivers of Chernobyl. You need to do some searching in order to find soft corals that aren't single polyp zoas, let alone the rare SPS and LPS. Fish aren't quite as bad, I think our prices are a little lower than in Europe. They often have diseases, though. Jealous of the corals over there, seems like you can find most kinds at great prices and as full colonies.
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Yeah, before coming here i actually worked at a LFS and i saw how they marketed, the invoices, and the price markups...one other thing I'm grateful for here is that most sellers aren't Photoshop experts or pro photographers by a long shot so when you order something from across town and have it delivered it looks like it did in the picture. Fish prices here are ridiculously cheap... anything over ~$30 is considered really expensive for a fish so a majority are around the $20 mark including some pretty hard to find species. Sadly with some of the corals they're starting to use the internet to compare prices in America and Europe and base the price off that regardless of what they paid for it. Is ~$45 a good price for the strawberry shortcake i posted a pic of earlier? What would it go for over there do you think?
45$? That's a great price assuming it's on 1/2" egg crate. Over here, many people would break that piece into about five frags, and sell them for 50 - 60$ each. They'd sell the whole thing as a "mini colony" for 150$ if they didn't chop it up.
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Yeah, the frag plugs are standard sizes...I'll go ahead and tell the guy i want it in the morning...tbh he usually gives me a small discount as well if i ask
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Because that is exactly what they do. Get a large chopped coral from the wild, then cut them up and sell the pieces. Chopped Shop is where they do it.
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I mean as long as the prices are reasonable and they are marketed as wild corals, what's the issue? We know wild corals don't fare as well in aquariums but as long as they're transparent i don't see the issue here. The alternative would be to sell the entire colony which would be very expensive on that side of the world where you are...
One little detail is that wild imports, especially after being freshly ragged, have a certain chance of random death, either from the fragging or from not handling shipping and the transition to tank conditions well, or all of those in combination.
Standard protocol is that the shop keeps those freshly imported and fragged pieces for a while so they loose their wild color that might look good but was never going to stay that way in a tank, and so that all frags that were going to randomly die are dead. The shop eats the losses and the customer gets a stable tank adapted coral that looks how it's going to look a year down the line.
With chop shops on the other hand, they push that risk of random death onto the customer, bad luck if you buy one of those, and sell corals with looks that will probably be lost forever even if they survive and get perfect care.
Thats why people say to only buy encrusted frags, that filters out exactly this practice.
This right here. Many times the frags have not healed and the vendor gives the impression they are aquacultured so the colors in captivity are at least somewhat known.
Basically you end up with a nub of a wild colony which may have pests, no clue of if it will be hearty in captivity, and no idea if it will keep the wild colors - all for a price higher than just buying a wild colony.
Many of us don’t like them due to the misrepresentation of what you are getting. Toss some photoshoped photos that still had to use a gel filter and and you get the double whammy of *if* it lives and no pests and doesn’t change color it won’t ever match the vendor fake pics.
this is what many of us call chop shops.
if they list what they are doing and have accurate photos most of us don’t take issue with the vendors. Even the high prices of live aquaria divers den sold large wild acros until recently for around $130 each and were honest about the source at least.
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