Eddie Hansen visits the Reeffarmers booth at the 2008 Bay Area Coral Farmers Market
Reeffarmers - This web site is the main distribution site for captive farmed
corals from the farming business Reeffarmers (owned and operated by Steve Tyree).
Steve has been farming and distributing captive stony corals since 1993. Back then, the
captive maintainance of reef building stony corals was still considered impossible by many.
Today there are literally thousands of reef aquarist around the world that are not only
maintaining these corals but they are successfully farming them. Over the years Steve has
managed to acquire a large collection of rare and exotic corals. To this day Steve continues
to search the U.S. for captive corals that he considers rare and exotic. Reeffarmers main
product lines include: Limited Editions; Auctioned Editions; Farmed Exotics; and Evaluation
Corals. All of our product lines are described below and their web sales pages are selectable
in the menu on the left.
Limited Editions - These corals form the main business within Reeffarmers.
Limited Edition (LE) corals are rare and exotic corals that Steve has collected over the
years and continues to collect to this very day. The demand for these corals has been
extremely high. Strong demand can actually cause problems for farmers. Over harvesting was
a consistant problem with early exotic coral farming enterprises. To better match distribution
(harvesting rates) with customer demand, Reeffarmers implemented a harvesting reservation
system. The rate of harvest is based on the growth rate of the farmed coral. Our harvesting
rates are monthly, bimonthly and trimonthly. We currently have well over 2,000 coral fragment
harvests reserved through our Limited Edition reservation system. Over the past few years this
system has worked very well and we recommend other farmers implement similar harvest systems.
We are not trademarking the use of the term 'Limited Edition' with respect to harvested coral
fragments. Reeffarmers was the first to use the term with respect to corals and we believe it
should now be considered a common usage term by the captive coral industry. There has been some
criticism of late about the use of a reservation system to distribute corals. Unfortunately the
people who have been criticizing its use are not current coral farmers, they are not currently
distributing corals in the exotic stony market and in some cases they have not even maintained
a reef aquarium in years. Steve Tyree has been farming corals for over 10 years and has become
successful enough to be able to financially support himself with coral farming. In fact in 2004,
2005 and 2006 Steve was classified as a Farmer with the IRS. That achievment demonstrates just how
far coral farming has progressed over the recent years. Some may also wonder how we determine
pricing for LE corals. The price is set when the coral is first listed as a new LE. We are very
slow and hesitant to raise our initial established prices. In some cases that means our prices
are actually much lower then the current spot market price. To help judge whether our initial
pricing determinations are inline with current market prices, we recently decided to distribute
the very first fragment of every newly listed LE coral through an auction. This provides us with
pricing feedback that will be utilized in future price determinations. We reserve the right to
raise and lower our prices. Any lowered pricing is applied to current and future reservations,
while any higher pricing is only applied to future reservations.
Auctioned Editions - These extremely rare and exotic corals represent a new and growing
market for Reeffarmers. We generally consider these corals to be more rare, difficult and exotic
then Limited Editions. Therefore predicting sustainable harvest rates is very difficult.
New Auctioned Editions (AE) are typically introduced with Reeffarmers only possessing
2 to 3 fragments of the coral within our facility. Auctions are currently scheduled on bimonthly,
quarterly and quadmonthly harvest cycles. These scheduled auctions however can be cancelled if
the coral fails to grow significantly during the harvest cycle. We were the first to use the term
'Auctioned Editions' with respect to captive grown corals, but we were not the first ones to
auction exotic corals. We are not trademarking that term and we believe that it may become an
industry common usage term. Historically the auctioning of 'livestock' animals has been utilized
as an efficient distribution method. So eventually Reeffarmers decided to develop our Auctioned
Edition line of corals. Reeffarmers selects its specific AE corals based on our belief that these
corals will be viable candidates for auction distribution for years to come. Typically these rare
organisms produce only a specific amount of offspring per year and many are new to captivity. In
many cases their growth rates and captive care requirements are not fully known. This makes taking
future reservations of these corals too risky, thus the need for auction distribution
Evaluation Corals - These corals are currently being evaluated as possible new Limited
Edition corals. There is no guarantee that these will become LE corals. The current list price
for these LE Evaluations Corals is $40 per small fragment. Typically these corals have been
distributed via private sales and on some of Steve Tyree's previous road trips. We will however
be offering some of the corals for sale via this web site. The reason we are waiting to determine
if each coral will be an LE coral is listed under the image. If the coral does become an LE it
can be purchased now as an evaluation LE at the cheap $40 price. LE corals range in price from
$50 to $165 per fragment. If the coral is not made an LE it will still be sold at this $40 per
fragment exotic coral price. Customers interested in purchasing any of these corals should email
to Reeffarmers at reeffarmers@ispwest.com . Please note that if Reeffarmers acquires a coral
that we initially realize will definitly become an LE coral, it will not be offerred as an LE
Evaluation.
Farmed Exotics - These exotic corals are what Steve Tyree believes to be rare and unusual
corals that are not quite suitable for Limited Edition status due to various reasons.
The current list price for these Farmed Exotics ranges from $30 to $40 per small fragment.
Typically these corals are distributed through our web site, through private sales and through
Steve Tyree's road trips. Some of these corals may have been grown in Reeffarmers facility or
they may have been acquired from other coral farmers. Customers interested in purchasing any
of these corals should email Reeffarmers.
Farmed Corals - These corals are fairly common and many have been distributed into the
captive coral market for years. The current list price for these Farmed Corals ranges from $15 to
$30 per small fragment. Typically these corals are distributed through our web site and through
some of Steve Tyree's previous road trips. Some of these corals may have been grown in Reeffarmers
facility or they may have been acquired from other coral farmers. If you are new to Reef Building
Stony Corals (SPS) the corals noted as being Easy to Maintain are very good starter corals.
Customers interested in purchasing any of these corals should email Reeffarmers.
Farmed Sponge - Reeffarmers utilizes natural filtration systems based on Steve Tyree's
Zonal Filtration Methodologies. We currently do not have any protein skimmers on any of our 7
farming reef systems. These methods rely on crytpic sponges, sea squirts and bi-valves.
Steve Tyree harvests excess cryptic organisms growth and distributes these organisms via
Reeffarmers and his own Zonal Natural Filtration web site. We will be updating the Farmed Sponge
web page soon.
Old Farmer Membership System -
Reeffarmers.com was originally setup as a web database for Reef Farmers from around the world.
The costs of web hosting in recent years has dropped dramatically and this has enabled many free
and low cost alternatives to creating web pages about reef farming. This has meant that our
subscription service never did create a strong demand. We have not signed up any new farmers in
over a year and we never charged any farmer for more then 1 year of listing fees. That farming
listing idea was developed by Steve Tyree and although it never became financially successful for
Steve, he hopes that it may have inspired other similar services to be developed. An example
of a successful reeffarmer listing service can be found at www.frags.org . We currently recommend
that service for anyone interested in a low cost easy to setup reef farmer listing service.
