Reef Frags: Ocean in the Tank

Reef Frags is the home for reef keepers: look up a named coral and what shops ask for it, dose your tank safely, and log what you keep. The Frag Market for trading aquacultured frags comes next.

What is open

Six of the named morphs in the book

Each one is drawn from published descriptions and checked against photographs of the real animal. Open one for what it is, how to tell it from what gets sold as it, and what shops are asking. Nothing here is for sale.

How the tools work, and what buying here will mean.

The tools, today

When does Reef Frags actually launch?

In stages, and the first ones are already done: the reef calculators, the Coral Bluebook, the Tank Journal and My Corals are live right now, free, and with nothing to sign up for. The Print Shop has its first piece listed; ordering is not yet open. What is left is the half that needs other people in it: the Frag Market, where growers list their own corals under their own name. Everyone on the waitlist hears about it first.

What is the Coral Bluebook, and where do its numbers come from?

A reference for 116 named coral morphs: what each one actually is under the trade name, how to tell it from the coral that gets sold as it, and what it is really priced at. It is free, needs no account, and nothing in it is for sale. Prices come in two kinds that are never mixed. Asking prices are read from shops' own catalogues and count shops rather than listings, so no single seller can set a range, and none publishes under 3 shops. Verified sales are entered by hand from dated records anyone can check, and none publishes under 3 of them. A morph with too little of either says so instead of showing a number.

Are the reef calculators free, and can I trust the maths?

Free, no account, and they work the moment the page opens. Alkalinity, calcium and magnesium dosing is worked from your tank's real water volume rather than its label size, and the salinity card converts between specific gravity and parts per thousand while naming the temperature a hydrometer is calibrated to, which is where most bad readings start. Every constant is derived from molar masses in a comment beside it rather than copied off another calculator, because this is the one part of the site that can kill an animal if it is wrong. There are two separate safety rails: a change bigger than one day's safe swing, 1 dKH for alkalinity, is split across as many days as it needs rather than handed over as one dose, and a target outside the range anything could survive at is refused outright rather than politely planned for.

Where do the Tank Journal and My Corals keep my data?

In your own browser. Both work with no account, and nothing you log leaves the device unless you sign in, which keeps a copy so your other devices can read it back. The site does count anonymous page views, and a few things done here, such as that a search ran or a coral was saved, without cookies and without tying any of it to a person. None of those counts carries your readings, your tank or your notes, and the full list is at reeffrags.com/legal. Your log exports to a spreadsheet whenever you want it, so leaving is a download rather than a support ticket. On a shared computer, each signed-in account keeps its own separate dataset and a guest keeps another, so one person's log can never upload into someone else's account. Signing out deliberately clears nothing: the browser's copy is the original and it stays.

What does My Corals do that a spreadsheet does not?

It joins the two halves the site already holds. A coral you add carries its care requirements from the Bluebook without anyone typing them, and it carries the parameters your own tank actually ran during the months you kept it. That answers the question a list cannot: not what you own, but what conditions this animal has really been living in. Losses are recorded the same way as everything else, with a date, because a collection that only remembers what survived teaches nobody anything.

The Frag Market, when it opens

What happens if a coral arrives dead?

The seller's live-arrival terms will apply, and the minimum those terms have to meet is already published, at reeffrags.com/market. Once the Market opens, you are charged when you buy, the seller's payout is held until you confirm the animal arrived alive, and it releases on its own 3 days after delivery if you say nothing. A claim filed with photographs within 8 hours of opening the box, and by the end of the day after delivery at the latest, stops the payout clock and is read by a person, and if it is upheld you are refunded the price and the shipping, with nothing sent back. Every listing will show its own terms next to the price rather than afterwards.

Are these aquacultured or wild-collected?

Origin will be a required field on every listing, not a claim a seller can leave vague. Aquacultured is what this favours and why: tank-grown frags travel better, adapt faster, and take nothing off a reef, and import restrictions on stony coral keep tightening besides. Selling wild-collected stock as aquacultured is the specific thing the listing rules exist to catch.

Do you grow them all yourself?

No, and that is deliberate. Reef Frags is the venue: growers list their own corals under their own name, with their photos, the parameters those corals were grown under, and their own terms. A frag does occasionally come off the founder's display tank, and when it does the listing says so exactly like anyone else's. Running a price reference and a marketplace at the same time only works if we are not also the biggest seller on it.

Do you ship in winter and summer?

Sellers ship, and the Market's job is to make them tell you how before you pay: carrier, cut-off day, seasonal heat or cold packs, and what happens when your local forecast is genuinely dangerous. Shipping livestock early in the week so a box never sits in a depot over a weekend will be a listing requirement rather than a favour, and holding an animal back beats gambling with it.

How do you handle coral names and lineage?

Honestly, and without pretending to more certainty than exists. A coral only carries a designer name where it traces to a documented mother colony; where it does not, it gets labelled a grow-out rather than dressed up. Nobody can verify lineage at the hobbyist level, because it runs on the seller's word, so every listing will name whose word it is. The Bluebook lists the same morphs without claiming anyone's particular frag is one of them.

Are the photos edited?

WYSIWYG will be the rule: the photo is the exact piece that ships, taken by the seller, under stated lighting, not a stock shot of the mother colony. White balance and brightness are fair; anything past that is not. Blue-light photos that do not survive contact with your own tank help nobody, and a listing that cannot meet this rule does not get published.

What will frags cost?

Sellers set their own prices. What Reef Frags adds is a way to tell whether a price is normal. The Coral Bluebook publishes two kinds of price for a morph and never mixes them: what shops are asking, once 3 shops stock it, and what it has actually sold for, from dated records anyone can check, once 3 of them exist. A marketplace with a price reference attached is one where you can look the number up instead of guessing at it.

Do I need an account to buy?

No. Buying will take a card and an email address for the receipt and delivery updates, and nothing else; that is one of the published Market rules at reeffrags.com/market. The Tank Journal and My Corals are there for anyone who wants their corals' history kept, never a gate in front of a purchase.

The waitlist that hears about the Frag Market first is a form on this page, and it needs JavaScript. Without it, write to support@reeffrags.com.