This week, we continue studying the ultra-successful Comparison Shopping tool and move along in our equally as successful (I hope!) Comparison Shopping series. The series began as a way to make our TRT community further aware of the importance of research before buying anything for your aquarium. We've already covered Protein Skimmers, Water Pumps, Heaters, Corals, and this week, we move to Invertebrates.
If you notice, we've conveniently skipped the Reef Fish category as we move down our list. This is because it's one of the most important categories to research and includes lots and lots of choices (the second highest of our entire group.) Therefore, I'd like to focus on it in two weeks after we've covered the rest of the first column and before we move on to the second column. We continue with Fish Food next week and move to Reef Fish from there.
In case you didn't know, invertebrates are animals lacking a backbone. Our group includes four different kinds of invertebrates to make 26 in total: 7 anemones, 4 sea cucumbers, 11 crabs, and 4 feather dusters.
Let's start with Anemones. We had 7 different kinds including carpet anemones and long-tentacle anemones, which we are going to look at today. The carpet anemone, which come in a variety of colors like blue (my favorite!), orange, and fluorescent green, had a HUGE price range starting at $6 for the Florida Condy Anemone and going all the way up to $289,99 for the Blue Carpet Anemone.
It was no surprise to me that the cheapest Anemone was taken from eBay, though there weren't too many others from eBay and the other anemones only came from PetSolutions, That Fish Place, and thefishguy.org. I was surprised that PetSolutions had the most expensive anemone because in the past, I have seen it as the place to go for the cheapest livestock in particular categories, but I guess in this case, it depends on the type of anemone. PetSolutions run the gamut from cheap to expensive.
There wasn't such a huge difference in price for the long tentacle anemones, however. The price difference only ranged from $26 to about $60. Again, the most expensive price came from Petsolutions...but so did the cheapest! Go figure!
Eleven crabs to compare and I immediately went for the Strawberry Hermit Crab and the Emerald Crab because I had never heard of either. Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you look at it) there was not much to compare in the Strawberry Hermit Crab category as there were only three ranging from $12.99 to a whopping $132. All came from livehermitcrabs.com. The Emerald Crab, on the other hand, had many types to choose from and ranged from an interesting $3.14 to $140. Most of the choices came from eBay and Amazon, surprising to me because I had no idea Amazon carried crabs or would hold the highest price for a crab. Joke's on me! Amazon did not have an emerald crab, but it did hav a 14K Yellow Gold Emerald and Diamond Crab Pendent! :-) The crab found just before this pendent was only $26. Just goes to show The Reef Tank caters to ALL kinds of aquarium aficianados (even if its the jewelry wearing kind!)
The Australian Sea Apple Cucumber was not overly expensive, but not cheap either. There was a $10 difference between one found at qualitymarinelife.com and the other at That Fish Place. The Tiger Tail Cucumber ranged from $14 to $20 with Petsolutions holding the least expensive product here.
The Coco Worm Feather Duster ranged from $35 to $6, with eBay holding the least expensive Coco Worm Feather Duster. No surprises here. The Hawaiian Feather Duster only ranged from $11 to $14, but each were the same kind of Feather Duster. Strange that the same kind of Sabella species was a few dollars less in one and a few dollars more in another. Pondering over research like this--that's what this Comparison Shopping series is for!
This week, we continue studying the ultra-successful 
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