What to Breed for Income?

[---XR---]

starting any sort of buisness from the ground up is very very hard, when adding in the fact that breeding fish is not a common nor viable way to make any decent income unless you were a major interentional breeder. I would ditch your plans now. the fish market just isn't big enough in america to warrent breeding fish and being able to make $1500 a month doing it. you could make some extra money with rays or such, but being able to breed and being able to ship anywhere in the continetal u.s or internationally to the few buyers who would want them, is another whole matter. it also takes a good amount of money to start up doing this sort of thing. i wish you luck, but i would reccomend you look other places to make money.

 

[---XR---]

my father went into buisness for himself a good while back, and after realizeing how hard to was to get clients for himself he started working for a large corporation doing the exact same thing, but for there buisness, he made the money he needed and none was the wiser, if you really wanted to do something like that look around for a large breeder, importer/exporter sort of company for tropical fish, and see if you can work for them.

 

[ewurm]

Most personal breeding projects are energy negative. You will pay more for food, water, chemicals, etc. than you will get for the fish. Apply at Subway, and procreate some sandwiches. At least you're making minimum wage then.

 

[509stinger]

I know of a guy in hawaii that breed golden tilapia for thier meat and does some other fish on the side for aquarium trade. but then again he he makes more by the pound than per fish.

 

[VVateverzYo]

some of the fish on your list are very hard and or never been bred in captivity before i would seriously go with flowerhorns since they are easy to breed and can fetch a very high price. the higher the grade the more money you can get for just one. Even in NYC they have a specialty Flowerhorn stores that sell Flowerhorn that are high grade for about 200-500 or try bonzai parrots thats the new craze right now

 

[oii]

Most personal breeding projects are energy negative. You will pay more for food, water, chemicals, etc. than you will get for the fish. Apply at Subway, and procreate some sandwiches. At least you're making minimum wage then.

nice choice of words

 

[pebble]

dont waste your time. most breeders breed their fish are from south eastern part of asia depending on the type of fish. they breed fish in huge outdoor ponds, lakes, rivers. water chemistry, natural food source, water flow, all all this bunch of crap thats impossible to follow. try to keep it as natural as possible. we never hear about people breeding dats, arows, roseline sharks in this country, why? because u take a fish to half way across the globe where it deals with a completely new environment. it wont get the same nutrients off food they catch at their natural habitat, and so many other reasons.

 

[yourockit]

Not on your list, but you could try different colour strains of Congo Tetras. Must be one of the easiest tetra to breed (and command more money than most) , big eggs, so easy to raise, popular fish in most areas too. Good in big shoals. I'm thinking of having a go myself soon.

Good luck with it and let us know what you decide to do.

will do, thanks.

 

[yourockit]

Both red bay and green bay (normal) snooks bring a fairly high price and are in more demand than current supplys can support. They are reasonably simple to breed under the right conditions and can be sold and shipped at a relitivly small size. They fit your eventual size requirements and are in my humble opinion a great addition to almost any aquarium.

Breeding for profit is risky at best and I belive it would be better to branch out a bit. Start up costs can be controled by buying baby fish and then growing them out to form breeding pairs and slowly building an efficiant tank and feeding system to support the program. All of that takes time and patiance however. The changing nature of the market precludes breeding any one fish unless it's an industry staple like Angelfish...discus...Koi...ECT.

Freshwater clams...giant pond and apple snails...and crayfish all ship well and have a fairly good profit margin. They also have a well established demand.
High doller fish like freshwater rays bring a huge price but can be difficult to move on a consistant basis and, of course, have a preportionally higher start up cost.

What you start out breedng NOW may well be a fish that has saturated the market by the time you have young fish for sale so you really need to anticipate the future market carefully. IMO it's unrealistic to set a monthly income goal in ANY kind of breeding operation because you may have one or two MONSTER income months followed by several months of negitive cash flow.

ONE shipping disaster, even one thats not your fault can wipe out 2 or three months of profit. You also need to stay away from any fish thats in good local supply because you can't possibly compete with the huge numbers cranked out by giant comercial fish farms.
Most LFS want to be able to pick up the phone...place an order for a fast moving fish and have it arrive in time for an advertised sale.

You have a good idea and it's one that a lot of us in the hobby think about from time to time but it's VERY hard to pull off for all of the reasons I listed.

The best way to start a small scale breeding operation is to stick with what you know and don't get in over your head. In other words don't go into it EXPECTING to make money...at least at first.
It CAN be done and IS bieng done but once you turn a hobby or passion into a buissness you run the risk of losing all of the joy and pleasure you got into the hobby for in the first place.

Yes, I think I will just collect fishes for now. If I get to a position of wanting to breed then I will try to do so then.

 

[MJY6087]

frontosas or tropheus for money