cthulhu77 said:
Don't any of you realize that octopus do not breed all of the year around? Babies are available from time to time, not at YOUR whim !!! This is a small business that is striking out in a new direction, and you are casting feces all over him??? BAH !
No wonder more people aren't doing it, with customer's like this.
You know, he really may not--a lot of people are used to pets like cats and dogs which have high availabilities. Even things that
most people would consider exotic such as iguanas and veiled chameleons, are typically available whenever you go to a pet store. I do agree 100% that its indefensible to use such extreme words about Octopets. I also like your message in the other thread where you talk about people's "amazon.com" paradigm (its even worse here because people expect it tomorrow and not necessarily in 3-5 days!)
I think the big issue here is education. Most people don't know what they're getting into and are destined to have a horrible time with it. How many times do people post really dumb basic questions, didn't know they had to cycle the tank, ad nauseum. Before I got serious about my setup I spent dozens of hours going through the archives on this site and various saltwater sites: The commitment is so large to keep and maintain one of these critters that was the minor part! If someone gets bored researching octos for more than a minute or two, I don't know if they have the patience to be successful keeping them. I don't know how many times I searched the archives for "octopets" "fishsupply" and "aquacultured" before I ordered.
This is an issue in a lot of big hobbies. The other thing I waste my money on is a homebuilt hovercraft. There are countless people who decide what plans they're going to build or what brand to buy based on how pretty the designer's website is, etc. These people invariably spend an amazing amount of time and money for a craft that is tailor fitted to someone else. The end result is the builder masking their unhappiness and trying to sell it after a few years. The builder's friends invariably spread the opinion "Oh, I knew a guy who built one of those things and it really sucked."
"I know a guy who put a whole lot of money into an octopus tank. He kept buying them and they kept dying." I don't want that to be me!
I could never do what Jim is doing because I couldn't stand knowing that 90% of the octos I sent out will invariably die in the hands of an idiot, with or without an Eclipse (I had a premature death in my 75, but I like to think my setup was alright and that he had a fighting chance). The critical thing is that is infinitely better than plucking wild octos out of their homes and sending them to imminent doom.
Now, given all that, I do wish that Octopets would have an availability page. It is very difficult to order the animal and not hear anything for weeks on when the order might ship--I'm sure half the phone calls and emails he gets are about availability, so I suspect it would save him a lot of time!
Dan