Your torch has thrown four heads since spring and the colony is now shading the acan you paid good money for. That is the point where most reefers start wondering whether the overgrowth is worth anything to anybody.
It might be. We buy and take coral in trade from hobbyists, and we review every piece before we say yes. Acceptance is never automatic, and we turn pieces down every month — usually for reasons that have nothing to do with how nice the coral looks in your tank.
Here is exactly how it works, what we look at, and what we will not take.
Start with the legal part, because it decides everything else
We take aquarium coral you already lawfully own. Captive-propagated frags and colonies out of a home system. That is the whole category.
We do not take wild coral, and you should not be collecting it. In Florida, hard corals in the order Scleractinia are listed by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission as harvest prohibited, and FWC states plainly that sale of recreationally caught marine life organisms is prohibited. If a piece came off a reef, there is no version of this where we can buy it.
Two more things worth knowing before you ask us about a specific animal:
- CITES governs international trade, not a sale between two people in the United States. All stony coral species sit on CITES Appendix II, and NOAA describes the convention as covering international trade in animals and plants. A frag moving from your tank to our raceways in Key West is a domestic transaction.
- Some corals carry federal protection on top of that. NOAA Fisheries lists elkhorn and staghorn coral, plus twenty more reef-building species, under the Endangered Species Act. Those are not aquarium-trade animals and we do not handle them.
We operate under Florida Aquaculture Certificate #AQ0254072. That certificate covers our facility and our animals. It is not a permission slip that extends to you, and holding it does not let us buy something that was illegal to take in the first place. If you are unsure about your own situation, check with FWC or FDACS directly — we are a coral farm, not your attorney, and the rules differ by state and by species.
What we actually want
The pieces that move fastest for us are the ones our customers already ask for by name.
- Named-morph zoanthids and palys with enough polyps to cut and still leave a colony.
- Euphyllia — torch, hammer, frogspawn — healed onto a plug or a small rock, with the tissue fully covering the skeleton at the base.
- Acans, favia, favites, chalice and other LPS with clean margins and no exposed skeleton.
- SPS with a growth history you can describe — what light it grew under, at what height, for how long. That history is worth more to us than an extra inch of branch.
- Mushrooms and other softies that have attached on their own rather than being rubber-banded down last week.
What we decline, and why
None of these are judgments about you. They are all about what happens after the coral gets here.
- Fresh cuts. A frag cut this morning has an open wound and no way to prove it will heal. Give it three to four weeks to encrust and close before you send photos.
- Recession at the base. Exposed skeleton where tissue used to be means something is already going wrong, and shipping will not improve it.
- Known pests. Zoa-eating nudibranchs and their egg spirals, red bugs, acro-eating flatworms, montipora-eating nudibranchs, bubble algae and vermetid snails on the plug. Tell us if you have had any of these in the system even if the piece looks clean — we would rather quarantine harder than find out later.
- Bleached or very pale tissue. Sometimes it is lighting and it colors back up. Sometimes it does not. We cannot tell from a photo, and neither can you.
- Anything you cannot identify. “Some kind of zoa” is not a listing we can write. If you do not know what it is, say so — we may still look, but it changes what we can do with it.
- Wild-collected anything. Covered above. It is not a maybe.
What to send us
The submissions we can act on same-day all contain the same things.
- Photos under white light, not all blue. Every shop shoots under heavy blue because it makes coral look better. We need to see the actual tissue. One full shot, one close on the base, one from the side.
- Something for scale in the frame. A frag plug, a coin, a ruler. Coral photographs at whatever size the photographer wants it to be.
- The name you know it by, and where you got it if you remember. Trade names matter in this hobby and provenance is part of the value.
- How long it has been in your tank and how long since it was fragged.
- Your parameters and your light — fixture, height above water, and roughly where the coral sat in the tank.
- Pest history, honestly. Anything you have treated for, ever.
How we work out what it is worth
We do not publish a percentage, because a single number would be a lie. What a piece is worth to us depends on what it costs us to turn it into something we can sell with a straight face.
- Identification. A named morph with a known lineage sells. An unnamed orange zoa competes with every other unnamed orange zoa.
- Condition and healed size. Fully encrusted tissue on a plug is worth more than the same polyp count on a fresh cut, because one of them is finished and the other is a bet.
- Demand right now. We know what sells out of our own racks and what sits. That is the number that actually moves our offer.
- What we already have. If our torch shelf is full, your torch is worth less to us this month than it would be in a different month. Nothing personal.
- Quarantine and conditioning cost. Every incoming piece gets dipped, held separately and watched. That is tank space, salt, light and time before we have sold anything.
- Resale risk. If it browns out under our light, or it melts in week two, we absorb that. The offer reflects who is carrying the risk after the handoff.
The short version: a store offer is lower than what you would get selling direct to another hobbyist, and it should be. You are trading price for certainty, one conversation instead of twenty, and no packing, no shipping, no live-arrival argument on your end.
Cash or store credit
We will quote both. Credit is worth more than cash on the same piece, for the obvious reason that credit comes back to us.
Take the credit if you are still building — it buys coral, dry goods, salt, test kits, anything we stock. Take the cash if you are getting out of the hobby or funding something we do not sell. We are not going to push you toward credit; people who feel pushed do not come back with their next colony.
Every offer is specific to the piece and to the week. We do not have a rate card, and anyone who gives you one before seeing the coral is guessing.
Getting it here
If you are in the Keys or passing through, bring it in. That is the easiest version for both of us and you get an answer while you are standing there.
If you are shipping, do not ship anything until we have agreed on the piece and the method. Coral that shows up unannounced has spent a day in a box with nobody expecting it, and there is no good outcome to that. Once we have agreed, we will tell you how to bag it, what to pack it in and when to send it so it does not sit in a facility over a weekend.
Two things that are true regardless of method: the coral should travel fully healed, and it should travel with the plug or rock it is already attached to. Do not cut it fresh for the trip.
Submit a piece for review
Submissions go through FRAG, our coral marketplace. It routes your piece to us for review and keeps your contact details off the public listing.
FRAG gives you three ways to move a piece, and you pick the one that suits you:
- Trade coral for coral — free. Swap a frag with another reef keeper. FRAG charges no platform fee on a coral-for-coral trade.
- Request a store review — free. Submit a piece to us for a cash or store-credit quote. Asking costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Acceptance is never guaranteed, and neither is a quote.
- Sell directly to another reef keeper. You and the buyer agree on the price and pay each other directly. As the seller, you disclose the agreed sale amount to FRAG and pay a platform fee equal to 2.5% of that amount before FRAG facilitates the sale or connects you with the buyer to complete it.
On a direct sale we introduce the two of you and review the listing. We do not hold the purchase price, run escrow, process the buyer-to-seller payment, guarantee either party or settle a dispute between them. The money moves between buyer and seller.
Whichever path you pick, a person reads every submission. There is no automatic approval and no instant quote.
Questions we get
Can I legally sell coral out of my own tank?
Selling captive-propagated coral you lawfully own is a normal part of this hobby, and it is what the trade-in and frag-swap culture is built on. What is not legal in Florida is harvesting stony coral from the water, or selling marine life you collected recreationally — FWC prohibits both. Your state may add its own rules, and a business selling at volume has obligations a hobbyist selling a frag does not. Check your own state, and treat this paragraph as orientation, not legal advice.
Can I sell coral through FRAG instead of trading it?
Yes. FRAG is not trade-only. Selling a piece directly to another reef keeper is a normal, permitted path, alongside a free coral-for-coral trade and a free store review. On a direct sale, you and the buyer agree on the price and exchange the funds directly with each other. As the seller, you disclose the agreed sale amount to FRAG and pay a platform fee equal to 2.5% of that amount before FRAG facilitates the sale or connects the two of you to complete it. We do not hold the purchase price, provide escrow, process the buyer-to-seller payment, guarantee either party or settle disputes. Trades and store reviews carry no fee — the 2.5% applies only to a direct sale between users.
Do I need a license to sell a few frags?
That depends on your state, your volume and whether you are operating as a business. We hold a Florida Aquaculture Certificate because we farm and sell at commercial scale. We cannot tell you what your situation requires — FDACS and your state agriculture or wildlife agency can.
How much are coral frags worth?
Whatever someone pays for them that week. The honest answer is that morph name, healed condition and current demand do most of the work, and size does less than people expect. A two-polyp frag of something people are chasing beats a ten-polyp frag of something nobody asked for.
Is selling coral profitable?
For a hobbyist thinning an overgrown tank, it offsets the hobby and sometimes pays for the next piece. As an actual business it is farming: you are carrying tank space, power, salt and time against animals that take months to become sellable, and a bad week of light or heat can erase a season. Plenty of people fund their tank this way. Very few make a living at it.
Will you take my whole tank if I am breaking it down?
Sometimes, and it is worth asking early rather than the week you are moving. A full breakdown is a different conversation from a single frag — it involves more animals, more risk and more scheduling on our end. Send photos of what you have and tell us your timeline.
What if you say no?
We will tell you why. If it is fixable — a fresh cut that needs four more weeks, a pest that needs treating — you are welcome to come back once it is sorted. If it is not something we can use, FRAG is still open to you — trade it to another reef keeper at no charge, or sell it to one directly under the terms above.