I agree with Greg, all other issues aside, the designer name craze has effectively de-valued pretty much every common, hardy coral's value quite a bit. No one makes anyone buy the designer names, but the names make it a lot less desirable to keep a thriving tank full of brown and green corals vs a tank full of fantiastically expensive, pretty looking corals that are not very hardy or fast growing. IMO the trend is not doing the conservation side of the hobby much good.
Also there is the money / greed thing. The club (or rather the entire hobby) has grown tremendously, yet I see fewer and fewer free frags and such. IMO/IME every year that goes by I feel like this hobby is more of a buisness and less of a mutual effort to be successful growing cool stuff for the sake of knowledge and conservation.
I will say that big $ names do in some cases encourage propogation of some particularly cool looking livestock, so I guess that's a good thing.
BTW, does anyone still have the famous "dog poop brown acro" that used to circulate so much? Now that was a cool coral
Also there is the money / greed thing. The club (or rather the entire hobby) has grown tremendously, yet I see fewer and fewer free frags and such. IMO/IME every year that goes by I feel like this hobby is more of a buisness and less of a mutual effort to be successful growing cool stuff for the sake of knowledge and conservation.
I will say that big $ names do in some cases encourage propogation of some particularly cool looking livestock, so I guess that's a good thing.
BTW, does anyone still have the famous "dog poop brown acro" that used to circulate so much? Now that was a cool coral