Sticker Shock!!!

[Mr.Firemouth]

Is it just me or have the tank manufacturers lost their minds? The first thing that shocked me as I got back into the hobby after a seven year hiatus is that big tanks aren’t readily available anymore. 7 years ago every pet shop sold the Marineland 300 gallon. Today the only way you can get a 300 gallon is by custom order. That’s ridiculous to me that you just can’t go and get 180/220 tanks anymore. These are also custom order only tanks.

the second thing that shocked me is the price of tanks!!! This is blowing my mind!!! The cost of a 20 gallon kit aquarium from petco cost roughly $200. 7 years ago you could get a 55 gallon with glass lids and T5 light with stand for $250. Tanks are basically $1.25-$3.50 per gallon depending on manufacturer. That’s insane. Tanks used to be cheaper because they knew once you bought a tank you would have to buy everything that went into it. Today you need a part time job just to buy a decent size tank and stand!!! It’s becoming an extremely expensive hobby.

The third thing that shocked me is the cost of the fish! Tetras and guppies are still inexpensive but once you start getting into larger fish or cichlids the price can go from $15-$100 per fish! Stores buy me sell plants from $10-$20! I know you can find deals online and I know I can buy used tanks for less but I’m still shocked at what everything costs.

Another thing I found disturbing is that tank manufacturers are very adamant about building and selling rimless aquariums. It’s getting harder and harder to find tanks with the plastic frames around the top and bottom. Being that I started in this hobby 40+ years ago I prefer tanks with frames. Yes I can still get them but the overall majority of tanks are rimless.

Nano tanks are great but they aren’t as stable as larger aquariums. Water parameters can change a lot quicker in a 10 or 20 gallon tank then they do in a 55 or 75 gallon aquarium. One of the reasons I prefer larger tanks.

I get that things have changed in the hobby. However, I’m not a fan of many of the new trends. I have no interest linking my filtration or lighting to my phone. I would rather just plug a light into a timer and be done. LED lights definitely have positive attributes but there are too many choices. LED lighting lacks the convenience of the older T5 lights that were pretty much standardized by kelvin/color temp. My point is not all LED lights are the same. You get different performance from different manufacturers and knowing which light is best for your specific aquarium can require a lot of research between the different brands depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

I guess I’m a bit biased to the old school methods that worked for decades and I’m not impressed by what is available today. 7 years ago wasn’t that far away and I am shocked by how different the hobby is today.

What is the communities thoughts on the pricing and quality of today’s tanks and equipment and fish? Am I overreacting or do you guys agree that things are overpriced?

 

[SilverArowanaBoi]

Is it just me or have the tank manufacturers lost their minds? The first thing that shocked me as I got back into the hobby after a seven year hiatus is that big tanks aren’t readily available anymore. 7 years ago every pet shop sold the Marineland 300 gallon. Today the only way you can get a 300 gallon is by custom order. That’s ridiculous to me that you just can’t go and get 180/220 tanks anymore. These are also custom order only tanks.

the second thing that shocked me is the price of tanks!!! This is blowing my mind!!! The cost of a 20 gallon kit aquarium from petco cost roughly $200. 7 years ago you could get a 55 gallon with glass lids and T5 light with stand for $250. Tanks are basically $1.25-$3.50 per gallon depending on manufacturer. That’s insane. Tanks used to be cheaper because they knew once you bought a tank you would have to buy everything that went into it. Today you need a part time job just to buy a decent size tank and stand!!! It’s becoming an extremely expensive hobby.

The third thing that shocked me is the cost of the fish! Tetras and guppies are still inexpensive but once you start getting into larger fish or cichlids the price can go from $15-$100 per fish! Stores buy me sell plants from $10-$20! I know you can find deals online and I know I can buy used tanks for less but I’m still shocked at what everything costs.

Another thing I found disturbing is that tank manufacturers are very adamant about building and selling rimless aquariums. It’s getting harder and harder to find tanks with the plastic frames around the top and bottom. Being that I started in this hobby 40+ years ago I prefer tanks with frames. Yes I can still get them but the overall majority of tanks are rimless.

Nano tanks are great but they aren’t as stable as larger aquariums. Water parameters can change a lot quicker in a 10 or 20 gallon tank then they do in a 55 or 75 gallon aquarium. One of the reasons I prefer larger tanks.

I get that things have changed in the hobby. However, I’m not a fan of many of the new trends. I have no interest linking my filtration or lighting to my phone. I would rather just plug a light into a timer and be done. LED lights definitely have positive attributes but there are too many choices. LED lighting lacks the convenience of the older T5 lights that were pretty much standardized by kelvin/color temp. My point is not all LED lights are the same. You get different performance from different manufacturers and knowing which light is best for your specific aquarium can require a lot of research between the different brands depending on what you’re trying to achieve.

I guess I’m a bit biased to the old school methods that worked for decades and I’m not impressed by what is available today. 7 years ago wasn’t that far away and I am shocked by how different the hobby is today.

What is the communities thoughts on the pricing and quality of today’s tanks and equipment and fish? Am I overreacting or do you guys agree that things are overpriced?

While I'm a relative newbie to the hobby, I do think certain things are overpriced. But honestly, that goes for anything these days due to *cough* the...people above.

I think the tank deal depends on where you get the tanks. At my local PetSmart, you can still get 100+ gallon tanks. I've never seen anything more than 200, but you can still get those kinds of tanks. But its true that most larger tanks have to be custom ordered. For the kits, I think that's just to make the hobby more accessible to the general public, the only problem is, unless it comes from a name brand (like Fluval), then its crap. But they are pretty pricey, although, PetSmart does have some killer deals around Christmas and that season. Also, they have a lot of framed tanks, most are not rimless.

As for fish prices, I think most are reasonable. I do think that plecos are way overpriced though, I get they are hard to find and all of that, but they are just SO pricey. Another fish I think is overpriced is tetras and small dithers, to get higher-quality ones, you're looking at paying 4-6 dollars PER tetra. I think they should be no more than $3, hell maybe even $2. And btw, those are the prices for NEON tetras, like the most common fish in the hobby. Occasionally, I also find cichlids to be overpriced. At my LFS, (not big box), they charge like $12 for juvenile Yellow labs, yes they are beautiful, but there is no way in hell would I pay that because I've seen them at much lower prices. At another LFS, for XL cichlids or larger oddballs, you are looking at anywhere from $80-$200 bucks.

Plants...*sigh*...I think that plants are WAY overpriced. At my LFS, XL Anubias is like $40 bucks. There's no way I'm going to pay for that. Instead, I just got a massive Pothos for like $30 and was able to fill the surface of the tank with plenty of floating plants. One of these days, I'll take a picture of it and post it lol.

So to answer your question, you are not overreacting, especially since you came from a time when things were, assumingly, less expensive in the hobby. Hope this answered your question lol.

 

[Mr.Firemouth]

I agree with the cichlid prices. German Blue arams have gone from $6 each to $15+ each. The Electric Blue Rams were $30 each. Black Venezuelan. Cory Cats were $30 each. Being that Cories like to be kept in groups of 6 or more stocking a 4’ tank could costs several hundred dollars. Inflation is a *****!

 

[Mr.Firemouth]

What gets me is that I have other hobbies like flying RC airplanes and jets. Costs across the board went up about 25% over the same 7 year period. Lithium batteries went up about 100%. But when you compare this to the aquarium hobby prices are up 300%-1000% in some cases. Some of these price increases are due to exorbitant shipping fees. Some of the increases are due to higher operating costs like wages and materials costs. I get it but I definitely don’t like it because I have suffered from Multi Tank Syndrome my whole life

 

[tlindsey]

I agree with the cichlid prices. German Blue arams have gone from $6 each to $15+ each. The Electric Blue Rams were $30 each. Black Venezuelan. Cory Cats were $30 each. Being that Cories like to be kept in groups of 6 or more stocking a 4’ tank could costs several hundred dollars. Inflation is a *****!

Unfortunately it's a money greedy world we live in now.

 

[EricTheRed]

These massive price escalations began in 2020, ostensibly due to supply restrictions during COVID, and are still with us despite supply levels returning to normal. It is up to us, the consumers, to hunt for the best prices and reward the companies offering the best prices by purchasing only from them. When enough consumers engage in this behavior, corporations will respond by lowering prices. A corporation would rather make a Ten dollar profit on 100 items ($1,000) than a fifty dollar profit on 10 items ($500). Hunt for those sales…

 

[tlindsey]

have suffered from Multi Tank Syndrome my whole life

 

[jjohnwm]

Welcome back to hobby, from one cranky old codger to someone who kinda sorta sounds like another! And since I fit that mold, I can throw that comment around with impunity.

I agree with some of your comments, but others I find a bit strange. Of course stuff is more expensive that it once was; that's been an increasing problem throughout my adult life, not just now, but I think that the Covid era gave sellers and spin doctors another boogeyman to blame for constant and huge price increases. "Supply chain issues" became a part of every conversation since then, and they were certainly real...but I think that once that phrase became part of the common vernacular, well, it became a convenient excuse for not only insane pricing but also terrible customer service, regardless of whether or not it was true. edited to add: E EricTheRed beat me to the punch on this point.

I've always thought that live fish... i.e. an item which usually must be shipped, sometimes over long distances and/or in bad weather, in a time-sensitive manner ...have been surprisingly inexpensive. I still think that. Sure they cost more than they once did...welcome to planet Earth!...but overall, fish are IMHO amazingly cheap. I was snooping around a LFS recently and saw a couple of marine Flame Angels priced at 70 bucks. That is what I paid for one of those fish back when I had marine tanks...back in the 1980's! That's just one example, of course, but I continually see fish prices that surprise me with how reasonable they are.

They're luxury commodities, like all other hobby-related items. I buy other items that fall into that category, related to other interests, and the price increases on them are staggering; far higher than on fish. Things like books (real printed books on real paper, not digital files), fishing tackle and lures, ammunition, firearms...the list goes on. These are items that can be packed into a box, stacked on a pallet, stored in a warehouse for weeks or months, and then delivered to their end users...and none of them will die along the way!

Tanks? Who knows? They are so hard to find in stock at most retailers I have access to nowadays that I don't know what they cost...and why would it matter, since I can't find them anyways? Back when I actually bought tanks, I would sashay into the local Big Al's store and walk through aisles of neatly stacked empty tanks, ranging from 2.5 gallons all the way up to 200+ gallons (yeah, they were all labelled in gallons, not litres ) and if I could pick it up myself and put it in my cart, I wouldn't need to special order anything. I did buy a half-dozen 70-gallonish tanks a year or two ago, sale-priced at just over a buck a gallon (!), but I generally make them myself nowadays.

My first purchased tank, bought by my parents when I was still in the single-digit age range, was 5.5 gallons...but it wasn't a "nano", it was just a tank. Tanks, even beginner tanks, got steadily bigger and bigger over the years, so eventually the marketing geniuses decided that tiny little tanks wouldn't sell unless they had a catchy name. Lots of them come as AIO tanks today (All In One), which sounds like a good idea on the one hand...just add water!...but also seems to pander to the No Thinking Required crowd, so I'm not sure how I feel about them.

Are rimless tanks really taking over in some markets? I dunno...maybe?...but I have never seen one for sale in a store in the past couple decades...aside form some of the tiny AIO tanks.

LED lights are, IMHO, one of the greatest improvements in hobby hardware ever! I'm not talking about the fancy-shmancy programmable multi-coloured clown-parade "smart" units that need you to phone them so that you can imitate a solar eclipse coinciding with a lightning storm; I've simply upgraded my aquarium illumination from fluorescent shoplights to LE shoplights! LED's last longer, use less energy, are less fragile, generate less heat and are simply better.

I'm as ready to complain about prices (or anything else...) as the next guy, and readier than most...but I try to be reasonably...mostly... It's 2024, and I'm almost ready to dive headlong into the 21st century.

 

[SilverArowanaBoi]

I agree with the cichlid prices. German Blue arams have gone from $6 each to $15+ each. The Electric Blue Rams were $30 each. Black Venezuelan. Cory Cats were $30 each. Being that Cories like to be kept in groups of 6 or more stocking a 4’ tank could costs several hundred dollars. Inflation is a *****!

Amen brother! I had 4 Adult Brochis Cories for a while and when I bought them (this is including discount and sale), I paid like $130. Even for rare cories, that is a bit much. I unfortunately got rid of them (my mom hated them and the tank had other plans, although now they are much desired *sigh*), but still.

 

[Flaring Afro]

Not sure where most consumer aquariums are built, but global shipping still hasn't returned to what it once was. The Panama canal has less freshwater available to run, and therefore has to let less ships through and with less cargo. Because of this, they charge more and other parts of global shipping now can charge more with the panama canal being a less cheap alternative. This is mostly affecting large heavy products, though air shipping has gone up too. It's possible Marineland couldn't justify mass producing those 300 gallons due to the necessary increase in cost and this is partly why larger tanks are more rare.

I also don't see how the lack of cheap plastic rims is "disturbing". They're just producing what people want, and you can always mimic it with black plastic or acrylic strips if you desire that look so much. Aqueon also still produces them but I'm guessing local fish stores don't want to carry the same stuff Petco has at a higher price, especially when people generally think they look cheaper than rimless.

A lot of stuff is indeed overpriced though.