Starting my fish business

[cupfishhead]

Check into local clubs, forums and things like this. In my area (Tacoma/Seattle) we have a ton of local breeders who have high quality F1 fry and they breed so much they have difficulty selling off the fry. Good opportunity to get high quality fish at a discount. Might look for things like that in your area to see what people are wanting/needing.

I do buy fish from my local club members when I attend some of the conventions but usually not the whole lot but that is def something I thought of and sounds great especially if you had luck with that too. Thanks

How about tank maintenance? The LFS where I live does tank maintenance for tanks in restaurants/bars/doctors' offices. Sell a doctor or dentist a tank for thier office, then charge em every month to go in and clean it, replace fish, feed 'em, etc. Hire some young kids to do it for you after you train em up for a few weeks... And when people bring in big giant fish that won't fit in the store's tanks, they sell em to the bars and restaurants to put in their tanks. I bet they pocket $100 just for "reluctantly" taking in an 18 inch common pleco at the store, then driving it across town and selling it to a bar to put in their tank...

Yes that is a reason why I want to start the business because I do have a maintenance business and want to be able to sell my clients more rare fish and make the profit margin myself.

If only I had a potent u world have sent some Trinidad Plecos your way

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That would be awesome, Maybe I will look into importing from regular people and see if all the permits are required. I believe there is a price limit the casual person can import and when you go over that price limit you are considered and importer and need the permit, so I will double check the actual amount that would be better to support local breeders then some of the importers.

 

[Pomatomus]

In terms of wholesalers I tend to favor Segrest because of their selection. However, some MFK vendors such as bluegrasscichlids already use Segrest, so you may want to do something different. However, I know that the guy I mentioned tends to offer saltwater fish more than fresh. Will you be selling saltwater as well? If so, the shipping cost from Sea Dwelling Creatures is high, but their quality and selection is tough to beat, especially for corals. I wouldn't order corals from Segrest because you never know the quality you'll get.

If you're doing new world cichlids I'd look into ordering from Don Conkel. The vendor "Ira" in NYC used to order through him, but I'm not sure if he's still selling fish here. Don offers some of the nicest F0/F1 new world cichlids around and has written a couple of books on them as well.

Best of luck!

 

[cupfishhead]

I am planning on offering primarily freshwater but some saltwater as some of my clients are into saltwater. A friend that used to have a saltwater store really liked Sea dwelling creatures. I also checked out Don Conkel looks like he has some nice stuff. Also I do like Segrest but I have heard that they do not sell to you unless you are brick and mortar which I am not going to be at right now as I am going to be running the business out of my basement since everything is already setup. I also plan on ordering from Jeff Rapps Tangled up in Cichlids as I have order personally from multiple times with good luck and nice fish.

Thanks So much for the info so far, all is appreciated

 

[Aw3s0m3]

You can also order from Ray at Amazing Fish. He gets all sorts of crazy fish in all the time and he's who I get majority of my fish from


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