Careers In Fish Keeping?

[Hemigrammus]

Do most lfs get there fish from a local breeders or do they get there fish from a breeder around the world? And also are there any other types of careers in the fish hobby feild, cause every time i try to search for it on the web they try to sell me somthing or it's farms for eating not selling to lfs

 

[dwilli36]

I'm not sure . It probibly depends on if they are a big chain store or a local store.

 

[rabbut]

The majority will import most their fish from Singapore or Malasia... Some will buy from local breeders, but it is not viable to breed most fish commercially in the UK or US, due to high labor costs. The fish would cost 3-4X what they do ATM if they were all locally bred

All the best
Rabbut

 

[Rooster]

Commercial breeders... not only is cost a factor (they are often unbeatable on price locally) plus from what Ive seen of local breeder stock, they are very low quality, probably due to interbreeding ?
A couple of our local shops DO support breeders, and offer "sale days" for them to offload stock... but most are in a very sorry state

 

[Tasha89]

My lfs purchase most of their fish from Thailand.

 

[Rooster]

My lfs purchase most of their fish from Thailand.

Is this because you live in Thailand ? (sorry, couldnt resist... )

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well yo've a few options if you want to turn a hobby into a living, however it's not easy and you're not likely to get rich doing it, but if you want to try then here's your options

own or work in a fish shop - if you're just working there you'll be on minimum wage or there abouts, even as a manager in a retail store you won't bring home a substantial wage, ownership can be profitable but it mostly only pays if you really understand business as opposed to just understanding fish. there are plenty of 'mom and pop' pet shops which happily tick over though, not making a fortune but not struggling either. that being said we are not in the right financial climate to be thinking about starting up a business particularly one dealing with 'luxury' goods which we all have to accept having pets and buying lots of expensive things for them is a luxury. It's not hard to envisage lots of hobbyist scaling back their operations in a time like this.

breeding - covered above, i wouldn't recommend it as your only source of income but if you want to set up a little breeding project to basically fund your hobby then lots of people do this sucessfully

sciency stuff - go off to uni and study marine biology or something similar and from there you've a choice of a lot of very interesting and rewarding careers. that being said while the variety of jobs is excellent, the actual number of jobs available is very poor and thevast majority of graduates in these subjects end up working in something completely un related.

journalism or similar - if you ar eparticularly good at writing and particularly good at fishkeeping you could have a go at writing articles and submit them to fishkeeping magazines etc. again wouldn't recommend you launch off and quit your day job to do it but there's no harm in giving it a go as a 'bit on the side' and see if you get any response back. If you're actually any good at it then you can make a comfortable living, but as you can imagine competition is fierce.

so yeah all in all there's not really any dream job in fishkeeping which will make plenty of money, you get to muck around with fish all day and you'll easily score a job doing it, if there was then we'd all be doing it.

 

[waterdrop]

Really nice summary there from MW!

I agree that retailing (owning a LFS for instance) is very much about the profession of business at its core. It takes a tremendous amount of self determination as you are out there on your own without a lot of others to help you make decisions. I've never been a business man but I imagine those that can soak up all the lessons a good business degree in a university has to offer will be the better for it. It takes understanding markets and advertising, supply and demand, having the self-control to save during times of profit and survive during times of loss, lots and lots of non-fish topics. But if you were good at it, it would indeed be a way to have the hobby you like be a part of your working life and there are those out there that have accomplished that, they're just pretty rare!

In the USA, I believe there is indeed a small enclave of commercial breeder/middle-men operating down in Florida mostly. There are those that have ponds and raise thousands of fish for resale to retailers. There are even a few little transport business who specialize in knowing what retailers want and what the pond people have to offer and run around transporting between them, kind of like a pizza delivery guy, probably with similar wages, lol! All of these things are operating "on the margin (struggling to stay alive usually.) And the bigger picture definately includes the huge operations in the far east which can operate with labor costs that would be like slavery here, is just a guess.

The fish related things in science are probably just as rare as MW mentions. Science unfortunately is a thing driven by politics and financial interests for the most part, it just often takes younger people a very long time in there lives before they can see through the complications to realize that. But again there are the rare things out there.

I also agree that the Journalism possibilities are mostly about "a bit on the side." I've even heard it straight from the mouths of some of these writers that the writing for the tropical fish hobby, for instance, is something to help finance their own hobby, not something to make a full living off of usually.

If you are a young person, I always think its so very important to try and put a number of important things together: First, you've usually got a very important resource to listen to in your parents, who are among the only people on earth who will have your personal interest in mind and who will have had 20 or 30 years or more of experience with the weird realities of what the world is going to throw at you. Its often the hardest for you as the kid to listen to, but its among the best sources of info. Then there's the important thing of taking a read on yourself. When you choose a career direction you have to try to imagine that you may get your wish and you may be stuck doing that thing for dozens of years! Its extremely important to try and see inside yourself to what you really, really like and/or really, really have shown some special talent for. There really are people out there who go to work happy most of the time because they are getting to do something they naturally "get a kick out of." It really helps them keep going for many years. Also, almost everyone has a thing or two that they do well, where others don't find it so natural. That's the clue you have to take about what might be your special talent. Its a very personal thing and nobody but yourself may know. And it doesn't have to be directly related to a particular field: it might just be that you are special being patient with people, or relating to people, or you have special patience with objects or broken things, or you are really good at getting others to do things... the talents are just all very different and you have to observe the true ones within yourself I think.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Miss Wiggle]

there was a really nice write up from Neale Monks kicking around somewhere about just how hard it is to 'make it' in the sciency/journalism world of fishkeeping, and you can be sure it';s the truth because he's someone who has lived it.

the other thing i always say when thinking about career choices is that some people are lucky, they go through school thinking 'i wanna be a teacher' or whatever else, but there's whole hoards of people out there who really dont have a clue what they want to achieve in life career wise. If you're one of those people then don't panic, I'm living proof that you don't need a vision to make it. I'm 26 currently working at a junior management level in a field that I just fell into by chance as a temporary job. There is the slight issue of the recession but I expect to make the career move to a proper management job within 6 months and be bringing home a ncie respectable wage from it. And to top it all off I actually really enjoy my job.

So just study things that interest you but keep them general, like a degree in english literature or maths will leave millions of possibilities open to you, then apply for any job that might just be interesting and don't be scared to try things out. Find a company you like working for and you'll be fine. It's great for those people who always knew what they wanted to do and could just work towards it, but for the rest of us life doesn't have to be terrible.

It's one of my biggest bug bears about the education system in this country that effectively you have to start deciing your career when you're 14 and picking GCSE options. Who as an adult thinks or wants any of the same things that they wanted at 14?!

 

[Hemigrammus]

Thank you all of you and especially Miss Wiggle and Waterdrop. I am still young 22 almost 23 and still have no idea what i want to do i think i'll just do the fish breeding as a side project since it seems really hard to earn a living off of especially now a days grr lol anyways I think i know what i need to do now Keeping my options open...But if i can be in the fish feild and earn good profit then you know i am there

 

[Miss Wiggle]

aye, in all honesty while most of us would love to get paid to muck around with our fish all day it's not really a sustainable reality for most people. But you can fairly easily set up a few breeding projects on the side nad earn a bit of extra pocket money to supplement the boring day job!

 

[Tasha89]

My lfs purchase most of their fish from Thailand.

Is this because you live in Thailand ? (sorry, couldnt resist... )

Haha! No, i'm a yorkshire lass born and bred! Lol!

 

[chefrossco]

they are all pretty much shipped from breeders abroard, apart from a few , however 99% of saltwater fish are caught from the wild !

 

[Tolak]

Commercial breeders... not only is cost a factor (they are often unbeatable on price locally) plus from what Ive seen of local breeder stock, they are very low quality, probably due to interbreeding ?
A couple of our local shops DO support breeders, and offer "sale days" for them to offload stock... but most are in a very sorry state

That's pretty sad, as well as embarrassing. If the fish I breed & sell can't at least meet, if not beat the commercial guys they get used as feeders. The same goes for other local breeders I know. If you can't beat Asian imports on most commonly bred fish you are doing something seriously wrong.

You are not going to be able to beat imports on price, you have to beat them on quality. You can meet commercial breeder's prices if you set up your gear right, with the proper setup you will beat them on quality.

I would have to breed & sell 4 times the maximum amount I do now to meet what I make as a tradesman, after deducting operating costs. This would mean having 4 times the amount of gear I have now, which is in my profile. I would have to do this consistently, year round, as during the summer aquatics sales slip down to near zero around here. To compensate for slow times I would probably be looking at 6 times maximum, with 6 times the setup.

Breeding fish full time, making a decent living at it is tough business. It certainly isn't the overnight take off like a dot com sort of deal. I know one gentleman, who retired a few years back, who took a few decades to build up breeding angels to a full time job with reasonable income. Even with 300 forty gallon tanks running he had to work a part time job to get decent health insurance.

As mentioned, you will make a few dollars on the side breeding, you will have a hard time covering the mortgage. If you are interested in involving aquatics in a career, look into the veterinary field. Baby boomers are getting older, companion animals are often a big part of older folks lives, this would include fish. The veterinary practices which include doctor with aquatics knowledge are few & far between around here.

 

[rabbut]

Most of our local breeders to work supply realy good fish. If I had my way, all our Discus would be locally bred. The guppies from local breeders have better colour and are hard as nails compaired to Asian fish and the bristlenose breeder's stock was breeding just days after being added to a newly set-up shop display tank We do however end up being charged extra by the breeders for the privalage of extra quality though This is why it just isn't viable to be supplied mainly on local breeders. If we did, our costs would go up, so our prices would have to aswell, making us price ourselves out of the market

One of my collegues used to run a commercial fish breeding set-up. He said he needed 5 staff and a few thousand tanks to make ends meet back then. I imagine things will have got a bit tougher recently Just imagine the costs of employing 5 staff, even at minimum wage, to run a fish room. You would need to be doing a lot of business to justify that cost, and most would likley be specialists that would want more than NMW

If the UK £ drops in value agains the Malasian $, then local breeders may become viable. Untill then, for the time being localy to me, I cannot see that happening

All the best
Rabbut