Well said Jojo. As I have stated before many times. Imported and wild rays would need the higher price tag to accommodate that. As a buyer we are expecting to pay for those fees and the different genes via WC or line bred for pattern over seas.
With all that on the other foot. For in country bred fish, rays in this case, they should be cheaper then imported since there is no wildlife certificates, import shipping, "out of pocket" risk, broker fees, negotiations time or any of that. There is food costs and things like that but local in country bred should be significantly lower in cost to allow for that.
The only down fall to this is that once there are several local breeders the demand for import drops and the internal genes falls. Importers try to compete but can't with local bred costs, so they stop importing them. This intern pushes people to raise local bred fish costs to get more out of the fish since "x" importer has/had similar quality/patterned fish that sold for a higher price.
Having/ continuing to breed fish, deal direct with importers, deal with local breeders and then sell fish for my store. I see all sides of it. It gets things really hard to sort out and is directly responsible for the wide range of prices. While the demand for high patterned rays goes up, the wholesalers/breeders see this and raise their prices to importers here. Only driving up the costs to import and out of pocket risk. That pushes people to go for the cb fish and feed the inflation on them. It becomes a vicious cycle. The only reason why the market crashed on black rays is that everyone here state side is dealing with the value of the dollar going down, cost of living going up and the overall recession the states are in. The importers have no choice but to take a smaller margin on them. Very soon if things continue the way they are importers will stop importing them. So many out of the hobby threads are just proving my point, people are just not able to afford to maintain the fish much less buy them. Once we rebound back out you'll see a huge change in the prices, now is the time to buy if you can.
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