Anyone Ever gone to CA/SA on trips to collect cichlids?

[astrocreep]

Wondering what all goes into this besides a lot of money.

Is it as easy as picking an area and finding a river or creek to collect some? Are there laws involving this procedure? Do you have to have a guide?

How does one ship them back to the states?

Feel free to share experiences on what one could expect

 

[duanes]

Other than now living in Panama, I have gone to the Yucatan in Mexico about a dozen times, Costa Rica half dozen, and Colombia S America once. My trips have been mostly to study, photograph and video cichlids in their natural haunts, as opposed for collecting. Sometimes I was lucky, sometimes not.
If I really wanted to collect I would sign up with an experienced group of collecters, like the ones Aqva Terra does in Uruguay.
On these trips, equipment and local transportation is provided along with the proper permits, and by guides who know the waters, as in the link below
Uruguay collecting trip!!
I'm sure there are others, but this is the one I know about, and know people who have taken, and thoroughly enjoyed.
Many countries are now getting very tight about removing native fish, and you don't want to be on the wrong side of things..

 

[duanes]

One other thing, that kind of surprised me.
The more I saw how cichlids lived in nature, the space they actually used when I snorkeled, or SCUBA dived with them, and how species that in tanks were aggressive, but in nature shoaled together, and how much less aggressive they were in proper space.
The more I found my own tanks to be be sadly inadequate for some of the species I thought my tanks were previously large enough for, and the common consensus usually prescribed as adequate. A bit of a rude awakening for me.

 

[astrocreep]

I've thought of that many times how we expect things to work out great by keeping a fish in a glass box 100 times smaller than the amount of area it would roam in the wild.

But then I think about how the majority of the fish in stores probably live short lives the least I can do is try to save a few of them.

This all came about because my buddy wants to do a Texas off shore fishing trip and I just wondered what would it be like to do the same but on a river in Central America or South America.

 

[duanes]

My next local trip is to Lake Bayano on the border of the Darian, where the native cichlids supposedly haven't yet been compromised by exotic invaders. I hope to enlist some of the Embrera, or Cuna to help.
And supposedly no crocs, so a little snorkeling might be in order.