Do you sell fishes to your LFS?

CFC · Nov 26, 2003

yhbae said:
Curious, from your experience, where do you feel you spend most of your $$ during breeding?

The largest cost for breeding fish and raising fry comes in the food ,lots of good quallity live food for conditioning breeding pairs prior to spawning (i spend around £18 (about $27) a week on live foods alone) and food for the fry, its ok feeding fry freshly hatched brine shrimp which is cheap but for fish that are too small to take them 2 bottles of liquifry a week for the first two weeks isnt cheap and once they have outgrown baby brine shrimp feeding 50 to 200 hungry little fish with larger live foods starts to cost too.
Water conditioner is another cost, i use a 8floz bottle of water conditioner every two weeks, ok not only for breeding tanks but the small daily water changes fry and breeders need does use up a fair bit.

Lithril · Nov 26, 2003

Hmmm, never thought bout trying to take plants back Moe, just thrown a carrier bag full of cuttings away.

brookie · Nov 26, 2003

i tried to sell/ give some balloon molly fry to any lfs i could and none of them would take them they are 3 weeks old now and i don't have many takers and the mom is pregnant again

Inchworm · Nov 26, 2003

yhbae said:
........I don't think I will end up with large multi-tank setup (at least not in the current house). That's why I was wondering if I could choose the right species that are challenging to breed, difficult to breed for volume, but may command higher price.

.........Curious, from your experience, where do you feel you spend most of your $$ during breeding?

.........I'd be very happy if I can maintain the food/chemical/accesories cost back through breeding, and few years down the road, accumulate enough store credit to get few larger tanks!

Hi yhbae

Thanks for starting this thread; it is one of the most interesting one I've seen in a while. :nod:

You don't need new tanks and equipment. Great bargains can be found by looking for yard sales, or in newspapers, or on bulletin boards in supermarkets, laundromats, etc. Also, tell your lfs what you are looking for. They may, at some time, be able to put you in touch with someone who wants to sell their set-ups. I just got 6 used tanks from a pet shop that is reducing the size of their fish department. (For $60 US I got 4 20 gal. tanks, 2 10 gal. tanks, 6 submersable heaters, 11 box filters and 1 plant. Each tank has a glass lid and they came with the gravel that was in them when they were on display.) It's a lot of work cleaning this stuff up, but IMHO, it's worth it. If I had to buy all this new, I could not afford it.

I have bronze corys galore! I don't know what to do with them all and they eat like little pigs! It's costing me more to feed them tubiflex then they'll ever bring back. That's why I'm so excited that my C. sterbai have spawned. They are 5 times the price of the bronze. The pandas will bring more than the bronze, too. Now, if I can just get them to cooperate......

I really like the corys and hope to find one or more that I can breed enough of to help offset the cost of this increasingly expensive hobby.

Be prepared for some set backs, too. I think I finally got gourami breeding figured out and the day before yesterday the male of my breeding pair jumped out of the tank. (He was mean to her, though. Now she's a merry widow!)

Yhbae, have your pandas spawned yet? :unsure:

yhbae · Nov 26, 2003

Thanks for starting this thread; it is one of the most interesting one I've seen in a while.

I figured many of the experienced aquarists might be interested in this topic, and as it turned out it is...

I have bronze corys galore! I don't know what to do with them all and they eat like little pigs! It's costing me more to feed them tubiflex then they'll ever bring back. That's why I'm so excited that my C. sterbai have spawned. They are 5 times the price of the bronze. The pandas will bring more than the bronze, too. Now, if I can just get them to cooperate......

I really like the corys and hope to find one or more that I can breed enough of to help offset the cost of this increasingly expensive hobby.

Yhbae, have your pandas spawned yet?

Not yet. I believe the ones I purchased were less than 4 months old, so they are close to 8 months if my assumptions are correct. I may still be few months away before they can start to breed. Since it costed me $9 each, I only managed to get 4 of them - hopefully, I have mixed male/female combo. Two looks significantly larger than the other two, so hopefully they are two males and two females.

I've been reading so much articles on the internet on breeding cories that I'm convinced that there's no more left!

Got "unlimited supply" of frozen blood worms for conditioning (thanks to platy fries), and I've been hatching BBS for the past two months, so that should be ok for the fries. Started looking into brewing my own infusoria and vinegar eels just in case they cannot take BBS when they are free swiming initially. Can't wait to begin!

I saw Sterbais the other day at LFS and they look REALLY nice with the interesting patterns and the orange fins. I accumulated quite a bit of info, and the only thing that I am concerned about breeding them is that they are supposed to be very slow growers. (Can anyone confirm?) Given their adult size, I am surprized that even panda cories reach the saleable size (around 1 inch) more quickly! Neverthless, if they didn't cost $19 for 2, I would have picked up right away!

yhbae · Nov 26, 2003

brookie said:
i tried to sell/ give some balloon molly fry to any lfs i could and none of them would take them they are 3 weeks old now and i don't have many takers and the mom is pregnant again

Perhaps you can ask if any LFS wants them at around 3 months time when they reach 1.5 inches or so... They might be more open in taking them...

My LFS also wouldn't take them before that, but very happy to take them at 1.5 inches.

Inchworm · Nov 26, 2003

Hello again yhbae

IMHO, both the pandas and the sterbai are slow growing compared to the bronze corys. But the sterbai really are beautiful fish.

I'm trying to find the ideal food to start them off, too. I was looking into microworms. The liquid food is not really adequate and fouls the water. I find the same problem with egg yolk, but i imagine it might work better with other fish than bottom feeders since, it seems to me, that it wants to stay suspended in the water. I was planning to try it with my next batch of gouramis.

Here's a link for a site that sells live cultures. I think I'll give them an order in the near future. I notice that once I can get the corys eating live food (chopped tubiflex @ 2 weeks old) they really start to grow. I'd like to start them off that way.

http

/www.livefoodcultures.com/

yhbae · Nov 26, 2003

Inchworm said:
Hello again yhbae

IMHO, both the pandas and the sterbai are slow growing compared to the bronze corys. But the sterbai really are beautiful fish.

I'm trying to find the ideal food to start them off, too. I was looking into microworms. The liquid food is not really adequate and fouls the water. I find the same problem with egg yolk, but i imagine it might work better with other fish than bottom feeders since, it seems to me, that it wants to stay suspended in the water. I was planning to try it with my next batch of gouramis.

Here's a link for a site that sells live cultures. I think I'll give them an order in the near future. I notice that once I can get the corys eating live food (chopped tubiflex @ 2 weeks old) they really start to grow. I'd like to start them off that way.

http/www.livefoodcultures.com/

I'm looking into infusoria and vinegar eels, since they both don't require live cultures, and besides, I live in Canada and haven't been able to find any place where I could get them!

Does your bronze cory fries take BBS from day 1 (well, after loosing the sac)?

I do have a spare Liquifry #1 (unopened) just in case if I need it...

FishHeads · Nov 26, 2003

yhbae said:
If so, I'd be VERY interested in hearing your experiences. (I'm sure many others on this forum are as well).

I'm definitely not thinking of "getting rich fast" scheme. I'm hoping that by accumulating enough store credits, I can pay for the hobby, and even upgrade some of my tanks.

I've started doing this with platies, and I was fortunate enough to find LFS which pays 1/3 of their normal price. This is enough to pay for the maintenance cost, but I'd like to do more...

So I'm searching for the next species. I don't mind if breeding them is challenging. I don't mind if the upfront cost is not low. (I'm not going to spend thousands of dollars on this setup, though...).

Which species worked (or is working) for you? What kind of setup do you have?

Actually I have had great success with Tinfoil Barbs and Albino Tiger Oscars. When they are big (I mean like 12 inches like Bubba, my old Tinfoil Barb was) they are worth a lot of money! I got 35 bucks for Bubba and he turned around and sold for 55! I had to take him and his partner (Wubba a female about the same size) to my LFS (called Wet Pets...I also have a Petsmart up here) and they took them both. :nod:

yhbae · Nov 26, 2003

FishHeads said:
Actually I have had great success with Tinfoil Barbs and Albino Tiger Oscars. When they are big (I mean like 12 inches like Bubba, my old Tinfoil Barb was) they are worth a lot of money! I got 35 bucks for Bubba and he turned around and sold for 55! I had to take him and his partner (Wubba a female about the same size) to my LFS (called Wet Pets...I also have a Petsmart up here) and they took them both.

Yikes, you must have a large tank to do that, right?

If I had a tank large enough to accomodate them, I would probably think about getting into Frontosas... I don't think I will get into that anytime soon...

Hmm... For that matter, has anyone successfully sold African cichlids to LFS? By judging from the price of rift lake cichlids, it must be feasible. Since most of them are mouth brooders or egg protectors, it must be pretty easy too? Shellies? Yellow Lab? Electric Blue? P saulosi? Demasoni? Julies? (probably all of these are too common to be worth while to breed)

All of these probably could be bred in a 33g...