why can't you make a profit selling/breeding fish?

You need to ship and have a large setup with multiple species only tanks. Even then you don't make all that much cuz you have to feed and power those tanks and put much time and effort in as well.

Tough to compete with cheap fish coming from Asia. They have little overhead compared to what you would have.

You can make money but you need to do it right when my jags bred I was like whooo hoo 5 bucks a fish!!! Times 1000 fish ! But every store was selling jags so everyone around me had em, the stores that did buy em bought em for 2 dollars each because they sold em for 5 most store gave me a in store credit and even with all that the fish stores only wanted say 10-20 so after setting up a new tank, feeding the fry, growing out the fry, water changes light, heat, etc... I only sold about 100 and pretty much broke even but by the next batch the market was flooded so no one wanted any or if they did it was very few

Breed for the love of breeding and to help with the offset of price not to make a million


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Jag586 said:

You can make money but you need to do it right when my jags bred I was like whooo hoo 5 bucks a fish!!! Times 1000 fish ! But every store was selling jags so everyone around me had em, the stores that did buy em bought em for 2 dollars each because they sold em for 5 most store gave me a in store credit and even with all that the fish stores only wanted say 10-20 so after setting up a new tank, feeding the fry, growing out the fry, water changes light, heat, etc... I only sold about 100 and pretty much broke even but by the next batch the market was flooded so no one wanted any or if they did it was very few

Breed for the love of breeding and to help with the offset of price not to make a million


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+1

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I have a local breeder in my area that does some really nice cichlids but the problem is that these end up flooding all the local shops and he still ends up with ads on craigslist to try and sell them. The demand for fish locally can not keep up with what his fish produce. You pretty much need to ship to be able to get rid of all the fish.

And if your going to ship you need to sell for cheap because of the cost of shipping no ones going to buy a 30 dollar oscar and spend 40 on shipping when they can get it at the lfs for 10

And most of the high selling priced fish like discus or L (what ever) plecos has a very small group that yes they will pay good dollar but there are not a lot of people that will or can house them also with some fish people only want pure bred f1 wild caught from this lake so getting the parents could be hard and costly

Now I was thinking of sectioning my 220 into 4 different areas and breeding 4 different types of mbuna at once then setting up a few 20 gallons to grow the fry but again small market


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My business plan to get into African Cichlid Business was to breed a species whose average life expectancy will be short. If I breed a fish that will live a long time, local market will dry up fast or is already max'd out before I even start shopping for a tank.

So after crossing out the peaceful haps and peacocks, I tried my luck with some of the nastiest mbunas. I figured the mortality rate will be high.

Long story short, my male auratus killed half the females, the kenyi male almost emptied out the tank, my demasoni male got pre-occupied hunting and killing the other males.....bam boom crash....back to the drawing boards.

Like folks have already stated....difficult to make serious money if you will rely on the local market, got to be able to ship. Even then, no guarantees as I see gazillion fish for sale on that bidding site. Competing against stores with big time breeding operations.

Packer are you wanting to sell pairs of proven breeders? That might spark some intrest for awile as the buyer will not have to grow out juvies.

But even selling pairs yea a proven pair will fetch more money but you have to by say 5-6 of a type of fish grow em out, hope they pair off then breed then you can sell them


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