I think it’s time to call out harm to the aquatic industry. It may seem nice for the hobby, but it’s slowly harming it.

Saltwateraquarium.com continues to rely on marking aquarium products below MAP for lots of brands in the hobby. They rely on manufactures not keeping up or not caring to enforce MAP. There’s times you can buy from saltwateraquarium.com for less than what you can on the manufacturer’s website and if you’re a professional looking to supply a piece of equipment it may be cheaper at this saltwater site, because they rely on bottom rock prices to move products.

This site even has a page keeping track of manufacture MAP though not up to date. You can find brands on this list that enforce MAP and saltwateraquarium.com still marks some of these items below MAP.

https://www.saltwateraquarium.com/map-price-controlled-brands/

On the customer level, it doesn’t look good either with their reviews getting a low overall rating from 1.7-1.9 stars from hundreds of reviews.

How are they different than real professionals?

Professionals work in the field and can learn, teach, and promote technique then sell an item if need be. Sites like saltwater aquarium carry thousands of items and in no way they can be professionals of every item. This site and other sites start just as a hobbyist if we’re lucky, sometime the site is started from someone that has no idea of the hobby and then just sells everything. And hopes there’s a few items that really move for them. All other items get shelved, discounted, and over time… the hobby and tech gets forgotten about and no longer manufactured.

Professionals lose interest or it simply doesn’t make to stock an item try to sell it at MAP (to make the money it’s worth for the effort) and remind that if other’s are selling at lower prices they are breaking MAP. Forget trying to get the item stocked in a brick and mortar store as they’re no way to compete with the pricing. And it’s not like professionals get rich as there’s little profit margin on these goods. But MAP allows there to be enough for the time and the marketing that professionals do… Not just sales. If you’re looking for professional resource consider a local shop, maintenance business, or sites like American Aquarium Products, which carry select items and are true experts in what they promote for different applications. It’s not hard to spot the difference between hard working aquatic experts and sales.

It’s as easy as getting a good URL, going to some aquatic conventions, and take advantage of the poor sales techs that are just trying to move their products. These techs are under pressure to move the manufactures goods, so they’ll do little to know who they’re giving selling rights too.

In trying to talk with some of these manufactures, the same response comes from them. “We don’t know who is doing it” and the amount of time it takes for these companies to really enforce MAP for an item can take up to a year or two!

People think Amazon is the problem and while they’re flooding the market with cheap equipment, what quality items you do find they uphold MAP. Same as like Petco.com, but take a look around and you’ll see the leech parasite retailers selling at cost and paying to promote to get ahead of all professionals. As soon as Amazon or Petco find out they’ll also dump the items.

How do they make money? Well on these items they don’t. There’s no way with the process it takes to sell goods. But take a bunch of shit and throw it against a wall, some of it is bound to stick.

Consider which companies you support in the hobby. Entry level people will care less and that’s fine, but people who take the hobby seriously most likely don’t know this is going on and are willing to spending the extra costs to make sure great manufactures, products, and professional help is available.