Aquarium Co-op plants pre shipping

[Patrick_G]

A question for @Randyor @Cory

Cory has mentioned that you guys get plants started on their way to converting to submerged growth. It’s a great reason to chose Aquarium Coop plants over others. I’ve seen the warehouse tanks on YouTube, but I’m curious as to what the process looks like, how long do they sit submerged before shipping etc? 

 

Edited August 26, 2021 by Patrick_G

[Cory]

This would depend on plant type. Off the top of my head, I'd say plants stay in our system for about 7 days on average. Some plants need longer, some need less. Things like Anubias, Java Fern, Vallisneria and a few others, are ready to go day one under water. Things like Scarlet Temple, Pogo, and ammania need a few days to get some submerged growth on them.

Depending on sales, is how long the plant will stay with us. We try to have nothing stay longer than 2 weeks or it grows too large to ship efficiently with each week that goes by.

Tricky things like Crypts. These are grown emersed. After a week or so, they'll have some submerged leaves, and some emersed and in general look good to the average buyer. At 2-3 weeks, it will be almost all submerged grown leaves and look small, but in great shape for a new plant owner. However they get complaints for being "too small" then at weeks 4-5. They'll look great and be fully submerged but still not as "big" as a emersed grown plant.

Basically as plants differ from our online pictures, we move them to our retail store. So if crypts are moving slower and converting more, they get sold at the store as someone can see it before purchase. Or if that stem plant is longer than a shipping box, it can go to the store where it won't need to fit in a box.

There are times when plants can be sold out, and then start shipping the next day. We experimented with trying to delay them to grow them a bit before shipping the first ones, but this caused problems in our forecasting software, and daily stock takes of plants. This also lead to over ordering, and looking like we were out of stock to pull plants for retail.

It is now our goal to just not sell out of plants as best we can each week and optimize. This is a constant moving target as each season brings new challenges, and supply and demand levels. Over time our algorithms get more accurate at guessing. However We could release a blog article or video and no algorithm can predict the impact of that.

[Jimfish98]

@Cory I would take small and healthy any day of the week. Went elsewhere for plants this last week due to availability for the first time and ended up throwing away two tissue cultures without planting them. All of my moss nearly DOA, bucephalandra packed bare root and dry. I can grow something small but I can't grow half dead or dead. 

[Patrick_G]

Thanks @Cory! It’s way more complicated than I thought. But that explains the long stem plants I’ve bought at the store. 

[Randy]

On 8/26/2021 at 3:55 PM, Cory said:

This would depend on plant type. Off the top of my head, I'd say plants stay in our system for about 7 days on average. Some plants need longer, some need less. Things like Anubias, Java Fern, Vallisneria and a few others, are ready to go day one under water. Things like Scarlet Temple, Pogo, and ammania need a few days to get some submerged growth on them.

Depending on sales, is how long the plant will stay with us. We try to have nothing stay longer than 2 weeks or it grows too large to ship efficiently with each week that goes by.

Tricky things like Crypts. These are grown emersed. After a week or so, they'll have some submerged leaves, and some emersed and in general look good to the average buyer. At 2-3 weeks, it will be almost all submerged grown leaves and look small, but in great shape for a new plant owner. However they get complaints for being "too small" then at weeks 4-5. They'll look great and be fully submerged but still not as "big" as a emersed grown plant.

Basically as plants differ from our online pictures, we move them to our retail store. So if crypts are moving slower and converting more, they get sold at the store as someone can see it before purchase. Or if that stem plant is longer than a shipping box, it can go to the store where it won't need to fit in a box.

There are times when plants can be sold out, and then start shipping the next day. We experimented with trying to delay them to grow them a bit before shipping the first ones, but this caused problems in our forecasting software, and daily stock takes of plants. This also lead to over ordering, and looking like we were out of stock to pull plants for retail.

It is now our goal to just not sell out of plants as best we can each week and optimize. This is a constant moving target as each season brings new challenges, and supply and demand levels. Over time our algorithms get more accurate at guessing. However We could release a blog article or video and no algorithm can predict the impact of that.

Ditto 😂 

[Streetwise]

I think that I have more Aquarium Co-Op plants than I have fish!