I don't know that there are really all that many secrets. I can buy from the same suppliers as anyone else on this forum and get completely different results, maybe better and maybe worse.
Part of the issue really is whether you are a long term buyer with enough buying power to get your share of the good stuff and make enough off the good stuff to suffer through all the undesirable junk, of course then you get accused of inflating prices when you charge more for the cherries than the average stuff---see for examples: Acanthastreas, Blue zoos, really cherry Acros, etc. But, even then you are at the mercy of your suppliers and what they get in, whatever they get you will get--junk or not--long term customer or not sometimes.
What most hobbyists never realize or care to understand is that we for the most part can not just place an order for xyz items and receive just xyz items, we are dealing with living animals harvested from the ocean and not screws and bolts or something that is manufactured. I am as quilty as anyone in getting annoyed and downright nasty when my suppliers don't come through week after week, but that really is the nature of this business---there is no real consistency.
Grow your own you might say---well, for the most part many hobbyists are not willing to, or interested in, buying captive raised if it will cost much more than wild collected, so for the time being we will be at the mercy of whatever comes in--good or bad--from week to week.
One problem for retailers is that everything flows down to that level, good and bad stock comes in to LA and it will go out, regardless it will be sent out to retailers whether asked for or not--what comes in must go out if they are to survive---that is a fact. Retailers often can not sell the stuff wholesalers choose to just send us that is undesirable and not asked for (now I know not all wholesalers do this, but many do send items not asked for and are totally unsellable), so it winds up sitting and eventually dieing in our tanks or given away at little or no profit and that is not what we are in business to do, bottomline is we must make a profit just like everyone else. Bad stock being sent out will always happen despite any undesirable lists or proposed reforms, etc. It is the nature of dealing with live animals collected in remote islands. Now, if by some miracle, the mass of retailers could come together and change how the collection and wholesale end of the industry works that would be nice, however as you see in thread after thread here in this forum so many different folks have so many different perspectives and interests at all the different levels that real change does not occur except some chest pounding, etc. So, what happens is those that think they have figured it all out and they have secrets become very protective of what they think is secret info, when in reality it is a very dynamic situation and not static anyway--so todays secrets are tomorrow's trash. Once I think I have a really special and great list of suppliers, "my secrets", the very next shipment I get slaped me back into reality.
There is no interest by me, and I think most folks here, to belittle newcomers. The issue is that we are all really continual newbies---again, the situation is so fluid that what I thought was secret info yesterday is not any good or "secret" today. And, what many of us see when the latest newcomer gets on this forum is that their attitude is something like---"OK, I'm here and I'm going to change it all, you folks have never done it this way and by god I think this way will work, lets just get all together and we can force it to get better". Many of us, I think, just sit back and think to ourselves, OK heeeere's another one. That's really not a put down, just that reality will hit soon enough and that experience will be your best teacher, certainly not what any of us tells you on this forum. Put some time in, spend some money and have it vanish with no return, and at times actually make some profits and do all the other things a real business does to get up and going and the "secrtes" just come on there own and what is a secret to me very well would be junk to you and vise versa.
