What Online Reef Vendors Actually Sell: The Most-Listed Livestock
Listing counts are a live census of the online hobby. The composition is far more coral-heavy than most people would guess.
Published July 29, 2026 · figures recomputed from data through October 20, 2026 · by Reef Price Index
Every listing on a vendor's site is a bet about what reefers will buy, so listing counts are a live census of the online hobby — not what forum polls say people love, but what stores actually stock shelf space with. Here's the census as of the latest snapshot: 9,234 priced livestock listings across four major vendors.
The composition surprise: it's a coral market
Saltwater retail is popularly imagined as a fish trade with corals on the side; online, it's the reverse — roughly three coral listings for every fish listing. The economics explain it: corals frag into inventory (a vendor can manufacture listings from a healthy colony), WYSIWYG selling multiplies listing counts further (every physical frag is its own listing), and coral shoppers collect in a way fish shoppers can't (a tank holds a few fish but a hundred frags).
At the top of the table, zoanthids (854 listings) lead acropora (1,058) — the hobby's two collecting cultures, the morph collectors and the SPS devotees, visible as shelf space. The best-selling fish doesn't appear until far down the list.
The 25 most-listed livestock types
| Rank | Type | Category | Listings | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Acropora | coral | 1,058 | $149.99 |
| 2 | Zoanthids | coral | 854 | $49.99 |
| 3 | Montipora | coral | 331 | $54.99 |
| 4 | Chalice Coral | coral | 249 | $77.00 |
| 5 | Fairy Wrasse (all species) | fish | 240 | $140.99 |
| 6 | Mushroom Coral | coral | 235 | $127.49 |
| 7 | Favia / Favites | coral | 210 | $69.99 |
| 8 | Goniopora | coral | 196 | $159.99 |
| 9 | Anthias (all species) | fish | 192 | $73.49 |
| 10 | Micromussa / Acan Lords | coral | 169 | $129.99 |
| 11 | Cyphastrea | coral | 153 | $39.99 |
| 12 | Torch Coral (Euphyllia) | coral | 96 | $299.00 |
| 13 | Hammer Coral (Fimbriaphyllia, formerly Euphyllia) | coral | 95 | $154.50 |
| 14 | Blastomussa | coral | 88 | $109.99 |
| 15 | Ocellaris Clownfish | fish | 84 | $79.99 |
| 16 | Blue Hippo Tang | fish | 82 | $119.99 |
| 17 | Plate Coral (Fungia/Diaseris) | coral | 81 | $249.99 |
| 18 | Naso Tang | fish | 77 | $239.99 |
| 19 | Sailfin / Desjardini Tang | fish | 75 | $92.99 |
| 20 | Acanthophyllia (Meat Coral) | coral | 66 | $499.00 |
| 21 | Rock Flower Anemone | invert | 65 | $127.00 |
| 22 | Leptoseris | coral | 65 | $39.99 |
| 23 | Emperor / Imperator Angelfish | fish | 60 | $134.99 |
| 24 | Psammocora | coral | 58 | $29.99 |
| 25 | Birdsnest Coral (Seriatopora) | coral | 57 | $44.99 |
What listing counts do and don't mean
- They measure stocking, not sales. A vendor's listing count reflects what it can source and frag profitably, not a ranked list of what hobbyists buy most. Clownfish sell constantly on thin listing counts; chalices sit in deep WYSIWYG catalogs.
- They're skewed by whoever lists most. One WYSIWYG-heavy vendor contributes thousands of single-frag listings; a fish specialist contributes hundreds. That's the online market's real shape, but it is a four-vendor sample of it.
- They're a demand proxy all the same. Stores don't photograph and maintain 1,900 zoa listings as a hobby. Sustained shelf space is sustained buyer interest — and for page-worthy species, more listings also means sturdier price statistics on every page of this index.