• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

Nautilus on Ebay...

Got an answer back for my questions:

We saved these beautiful creature from a salvage diver who pulled him from the deep. We paid $450 to make sure this creature had a chance at survival.

We are very new to the Internet/Ebay situation and have only an interest in recouping some of our money and giving back a rare and beautiful creature to the marine community.

If you would be so kind as to provide us a "care sheet" of sorts, we would be more that happy to put it up our auction page.

Again, we are new to this Ebay situation and only put up this auction on advice from local marine enthusiasts. We are in NO WAY looking to exploit this creature. We just want to find it a home in capable hands.

We're doing are best :/

Any help/info would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for the message. Please message back after reading this.

-Scott

So, if anyone can send this person a "care sheet" on a Nautilus...
 
Thales;104311 said:
I don't think I buy that story. Thats soooooo expensive for a Nautilus.

Yeah, the NRCC charges $190 or $240 for animals with a known history:

http://www.utmb.edu/nrcc/PRICES.html

of course, they only sell to research and educational institutions, but it's not clear that "fly by night nautilus dealers on ebay" should be justified in charging more than the NRCC's professionally validated animals.
 
They aren't justified at all. It feels to me like they are trying to make money because, sadly, in the hobby Nautilus are often less expensive than NRCC prices.
 
Yep, its going to sell. If you look at the bidder's feedback items, he has purchased things like bangaii cardinals and neon gobies. Hopefully the nautilus isn't going into the same tank (but I'm sure it is).

Hey - does anyone have an EBay account they don't care about? You could either bid $500 for it and then bail out of the auction, (and take a hit as a non-paying bidder) or you could contact the bidder directly and warn him or her off. I can't do either 'cause I have two items up for sale right now, not to mention 190 positive feedbacks that I need to protect.

JHemdal
 
My boss is the one who put the Nautilus on Ebay.

I'm the one who came along after the fact and corrected the page (replaced the copy written image as well) and added some crucial info regarding the Nautilus.

I'm caught in a bit of a catch 22 here.

I was the person who talked my boss in to saving the Nautilus from the "diver" (I use the term loosely) who came in flaunting it like a piece of jewelry. I've read a little bit about Cephalopods to know that they are sensitive and delicate creatures, but my knowledge of this particular species was non existent at the time. So needless to say, I talked my boss into shelling out $450 for this creature.

Now here's the issue:

The Nautilus was placed on ebay in order for him to recoup some of the money back. I've tried to talk him into donating this creature the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution which is 10 minutes up the road from us (BEAUTIFUL facility, by the way). I even used the "good for business" approach stating that we could call the local newspaper and try to make it a positive "PR" move. But, unfortunately that's not happening.

So now I'm sitting in a position where I feel maybe I should have not persuaded the owner to buy this creature. Although I can guarantee he would not be alive today if we hadn't. But now I'm worried that we won't be putting this creature in capable hands.

I'm really at a loss. It's sort of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. Even if I had the money to buy him from the owner... I don't have a proper environment for him (or her).

:sink:
 
:welcome: and thanks for giving us some more details... sorry that this is turning into such a mess...

I'm a bit confused about how it was decided that the diver should be paid $450 for the animal in the first place... although if he was torturing the poor animal to death, and that was what he asked to give it up, I can understand the rationalization.

I think in the bigger picture, the main concern is that very few people are qualified or equipped to give a nautilus a comfortable home, so as you've read, a lot of the folks here really don't want the precedent that these animals should be sold to hobbyists. I'm not sure what the right thing to do is for the animal, and for the good of nautiluses in general... if this encourages people to collect them and sell them in the pet trade more by having people realize that they can get $450 for them, that'll be incentive for people to capture them. But it does seem unfortunate if you and your boss are penalized $450 for trying to do something responsible...

Maybe we can brainstorm a bit; what does the NRCC do when obtaining new nautiluses from collectors? I'm concerned that if we try to find it a good home, since you don't seem to have much respect for this collector, that it could be carrying pathogens or parasites. If it's unhealthy, it might be a liability. If those aren't concerns, there are folks here who are equipped to keep nautilus: gjbarord, Robyn, and I think maybe jhemdal. But I have no idea if they would want to risk bringing a new animal of unknown history into their tanks, and I doubt any of them would pay $450 when they could get one from the NRCC for $190. Of course, it's possible that the mystery ebay bidder is actually a good home for the animal, but that seems unlikely...

Unfortunately, sometimes when this sort of thing comes up, the best course of action in the big picture seems to be to make sure that the animal dies in the store without being sold, so that in the long term the stores don't buy them from collectors and the collectors stop collecting them. But that seems needlessly cruel to this particular animal.

Really, the diver overcharged your boss, and that's going to be hard to fix.

I guess some other things I'm unclear on are where the animal is now, and what we know about its condition and history... if the diver you got it from took such bad care of it, I'd worry that it may not have much time to live, which would make it even less likely to be worth $450...
 
:welcome: and thank you for posting. Is there another aquarium in Florida that might be willing to accept this animal? Florida Aquarium or Mote Marine Laboratory? I don't really know too much about either of these facilities but at least it is a start.
 
They way I read his post was not that the aquarium he wanted to donate the Nautilus to would not take it, but that his boss (who actually purchased the animal, after persuasion) was not willing to donate an animal that he paid $450 for. I would probably buy this animal if I had a tank for him, mostly because I think that I would be more capable hands than a lot of other hobbiests (at least I know basic things, and have expert people from this site that can help me when I have questions), and hopefully this nautilus would have a good home at least for a while. Unfortunately, I am not in a situation right now to purchase this animal, nor do I plan to be for quite some time (though I do hope I will have the chance to keep one [or more] down the road).

I hope this animal can be found to a good home. Maybe the seller can direct the buyer to this site so that he may have access to care information if he chooses to be 'responsible'.
 

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