What do you buy most often?

[Art]

What aquarium-related item do you end up buying the most?

Some things we buy once (or rarely) such an aquarium. Other things we buy often like fish food, fertilizer, dechlorinator etc.

 

[Achi]

At this point I buy mostly CASO4, and K2SO4 mostly because I stock up on stuff

 

[BigWave]

As Achi said mostly gH salts. I also mix my own declorinator based of the beer making crowd. They use Sodium MetaBiSulfite NaS2O5 aka Campden tablets to declorinate water. If you look closely at most of the name brand water declorinators on the market they are made with Potassium MetaBiSulfite K2S2O5. Link: Campden Tablets: What Are They, Uses & How They Work

 

[GreggZ]

That's easy....plants!!

 

[Art]

I'm really interested in this topic to help businesses focused on our hobby. My point is that most of us will buy things to set up an aquarium but then don't re-buy these for a while. Putting aside the tank multiplication or upgrade disease we sometimes get, it's a one and done.

However, things like plants and some supplements are where the volume is. It's like the ink cartridges for printers. The money is in the cartridges! Or, the plants and supplements in our case.

 

[Achi]

I think it will always be plants unless you are happy with current stock. Frequent substrate changing and lighting upgrade in my case, I am always looking to have more PAR or a different color rendition. But consumables like fertilizer filter floss etc, oo wait that’s what I buy most of lol filter floss (polyfill) to use in my home made polishers that I keep in the tank 24-7 and to vacuum the substrate.

 

[BigWave]

I'm really interested in this topic to help businesses focused on our hobby. My point is that most of us will buy things to set up an aquarium but then don't re-buy these for a while. Putting aside the tank multiplication or upgrade disease we sometimes get, it's a one and done.

However, things like plants and some supplements are where the volume is. It's like the ink cartridges for printers. The money is in the cartridges! Or, the plants and supplements in our case.

One extremely huge hurdle here in the USA is getting actual plant soil. I don't understand it at all. There are the big name brands like ADA Amazonia, Tropica Plant Soil, UNS Soil, Seachem-Aquavitro Aquasolium and Fluval Stratum. The Stratum being the cheapest out of all these and Aquasolium the most expensive. You should not have to pay +-$50 a bag. Even with all these name brands its hard to get.

 

[ayman.roshdy]

When I started having planted tanks I was under the impression that I will buy some plants and will never buy any plants afterwards and will always use plants' propagation or trimmings from the ones I bought, this happens to some extent but I am still always buying new plants, for some reason the plants I buy are always in a better health than the ones I propagate, hopefully this changes with the new high tech tank I am planning

 

[JPog]

Definitely plants, especially if members will continue to be made aware of new species via the resource forum here.

 

[shopaquariumfish.com]

One extremely huge hurdle here in the USA is getting actual plant soil. I don't understand it at all. There are the big name brands like ADA Amazonia, Tropica Plant Soil, UNS Soil, Seachem-Aquavitro Aquasolium and Fluval Stratum. The Stratum being the cheapest out of all these and Aquasolium the most expensive. You should not have to pay +-$50 a bag. Even with all these name brands its hard to get.

And those can be small bags. I currently use Prodibio. 1 because I'm an ambassadors, and 2 I can buy it wholesale. That being said, I've spoken with the owner on the costs in the US. The cost of shipping it here is what kills us. If an American makes it, they'll kill us because it's American made. Unfortunately, it's a situation where " it is what it is".

 

[shopaquariumfish.com]

Hardscape! One can never have a good stash of it lol.

 

[Art]

Hardscape! One can never have a good stash of it lol.

JJ I've noticed that aquascapers tend to say this and it's so true. However, I feel that 90% of the market out there don't consider themselves aquascapers and normally don't re-do their tanks. So, hardscape becomes much less important after the initial buy.

You all have confirmed my suspicion that plants is what most people purchase. So, if I were an entrepreneur in the US, I would be looking at setting up a good online store that sells plants. With all due respect to all of those that do it today, I have yet to find a brick and mortar or online store that consistently has a good selection, especially of tissue cultured plants.

The last time I was in the market, I went to all the ones you can think of only to find a large variety that was mostly out-of-stock. I ended up having to piece together my initial planting from 3 online stores, Facebook sellers and a couple of eBay sellers. And, I still had to make compromises due to lack of availability.

Don't get me wrong, it's far better than it was in the past. However, we are no where near where Europe or Asia are. This is why I'm so anxious to promote good companies on this site.

 

[ayman.roshdy]

JJ I've noticed that aquascapers tend to say this and it's so true. However, I feel that 90% of the market out there don't consider themselves aquascapers and normally don't re-do their tanks. So, hardscape becomes much less important after the initial buy.

You all have confirmed my suspicion that plants is what most people purchase. So, if I were an entrepreneur in the US, I would be looking at setting up a good online store that sells plants. With all due respect to all of those that do it today, I have yet to find a brick and mortar or online store that consistently has a good selection, especially of tissue cultured plants.

The last time I was in the market, I went to all the ones you can think of only to find a large variety that was mostly out-of-stock. I ended up having to piece together my initial planting from 3 online stores, Facebook sellers and a couple of eBay sellers. And, I still had to make compromises due to lack of availability.

Don't get me wrong, it's far better than it was in the past. However, we are no where near where Europe or Asia are. This is why I'm so anxious to promote good companies on this site.

Believe me your status in the US is much much better than what we have in Africa or the middle east, to purchase my plants I am mainly using local growers who grow a very small subset of plants and the space they use to grow the plants is very small as well, so when plants are out of stock we need to wait for them to grow some more (this is the most advanced one so far called GreenTank)

On the other hand there is almost no hardscape to purchase at all, and most of the equipments are very cheap Chinese brands with a very bad quality. In the past I used to import what I need from abroad, but now with the ridiculous inflation and currency problems it is not an option any more

The only positive thing is that lack of resources give us some room to invent more