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 November 8, 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: 9,343 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 (625 listings) lead acropora (1,131) — 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 | 1,131 | $149.99 |
| 2 | Zoanthids | coral | 625 | $49.99 |
| 3 | Fairy Wrasse (all species) | fish | 284 | $128.99 |
| 4 | Montipora | coral | 273 | $54.99 |
| 5 | Chalice Coral | coral | 225 | $79.00 |
| 6 | Mushroom Coral | coral | 211 | $129.99 |
| 7 | Anthias (all species) | fish | 195 | $80.99 |
| 8 | Micromussa / Acan Lords | coral | 178 | $114.99 |
| 9 | Favia / Favites | coral | 171 | $64.99 |
| 10 | Goniopora | coral | 158 | $179.99 |
| 11 | Filefish | fish | 158 | $59.99 |
| 12 | Hogfish (Bodianus) | fish | 124 | $97.49 |
| 13 | Emperor / Imperator Angelfish | fish | 107 | $119.99 |
| 14 | Cyphastrea | coral | 85 | $39.99 |
| 15 | Ocellaris Clownfish | fish | 84 | $61.99 |
| 16 | Naso Tang | fish | 84 | $278.49 |
| 17 | Blue Hippo Tang | fish | 83 | $109.49 |
| 18 | Plate Coral (Fungia/Diaseris) | coral | 80 | $249.99 |
| 19 | Blastomussa | coral | 79 | $99.99 |
| 20 | Sailfin / Desjardini Tang | fish | 74 | $119.99 |
| 21 | Torch Coral (Euphyllia) | coral | 69 | $299.50 |
| 22 | Hammer Coral (Fimbriaphyllia, formerly Euphyllia) | coral | 67 | $149.99 |
| 23 | Leopard Wrasse (Macropharyngodon) | fish | 59 | $155.99 |
| 24 | French Angelfish | fish | 50 | $194.99 |
| 25 | Lemonpeel Dwarf Angelfish | fish | 49 | $86.99 |
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.