Arizona coral company

[adamRS80]

Well I had to try this place out and all I can say is that I wish I could have ordered from John every time I've purchased corals online. It was a really good experience and the corals are doing really well. Just thought I'd give a little credit to them.

[matt]

John is an excellent guy and really stands behind everything he raises/sells. He's a former San Antonio resident, and we should support his worthy business!

[adamRS80]

I've dealt with a number of online livestock vendors ...drmac, liveaquaria.com, reefermaddnes, and others. he's much better to deal with. Couldn't be happier. Anybody else try him out? Don't be turned off by the pictures on his website, because everything I got was much more attractive than in the photo. I think he's still trying to get his camera/lighting right so the pictures come out correctly.

[cubera]

Thanks for the kind words Adam and Matt! Photos will get better...At least what people are getting is better than they expected based on the lousy photos. Some of them are not too bad but we are really having problems under the lighting we are using. Coloration and coral health are absolutley superb but trying to get good pictures under these conditions is difficult. Add this to our rigid policy prohibiting alteration of color on photos and it gets even harder. We have to try and market our products against other Etailers who tend to ship corals people would never expect to get based on the photo of what they think they are buying....Anyway, we have some really beautiful corals and we are confident this will become known over time:) We are developing some very exotic captive raised SPS and a huge LPS/leather/invert line as well. This is an exciting albeit exhausting time for us!

[Ram_Puppy]

cubera,

I applaud your stringent standards on not altering color, something to consider, in Microsoft Photo Editor, if you pull up a photo in it, and use the 'auto adjust' feature, it is 'supposed' to mathmaticlaly determine what the colors should be. I am not quite sure how the technology truly works, all I can say is in my experience it usually does a good job.

Another thought, is, until you can get it working more properly, why not post two pictures, one un-altered one, and one that you have adjusted to be a more 'true' representation of how it looks under your lighting? lable it as such, and your still being completely honest iwth your customers... can't wait to make an order! :)

[cubera]

Microsoft Photo Editor does a worse job than the 5 year old Camedia program I use. Photos are taken on corals where they are tanked. They are not moved to locations for better shots or moved to lighting different than what they are tanked under. They are shot on an Olympus D-460 Zoom, uploaded on Camedia where they are cropped, digitally water marked, Tagged, focused as best the program will allow, then stored on CDs until they are uploaded on the site. (I have had numerous photos pirated over the years so every photo is digitally marked and tagged). I've never had a complaint about any deception (by a CUSTOMER) and I intend on keeping it this way. I think the idea of noting each section with the type of lighting the coral is photographed under is excellent and this will be done immediatley. I'm working hard to get our photos up to speed but they will never be doctored and altered as has become the norm these days. I do the majority of photo work myself and when there are hundreds to deal with it becomes very time intensive and oftentimes very frustrating:) Maybe I'll use this as an excuse to get a better camera....or better photographer!

[malofish]

Get both!!! I'm still gonna get all my Acro heads from you, just give me time to get my tank set up!!! I might even try a group order from you !! Keep in touch, your not losing any popularity here on MAAST! JJ

[cubera]

Thanks, JJ. We are doing WYSIWYG photos trying to keep up with dozens of colonies. Very hard to get detailed photos at various distance and proximities to lights. I'll be working at it again today. BTW, MAAST members can get about the same deal on individual orders as they could on a group buy. We'll improve the photos. I'm putting notes about what I think about the photos compared to how the colonies actually look in real life. This might help:)