Here We Go Again... I Hate Aquabid

[LauraFrog]

$40 for the fish (fair price IMO)
$25 to bring it into Australia and have it quarantined
$25 to have it sent from Brisbane to me

So plenty, in other words... I feel like there's a global campaign to send me broke, the first fish I have really gone out of my way to get imported appears on aquabid, the LFS gets bumblebee gobies and crowntail bettas, one of my filters busts up and has to get replaced - ALL in the same week. But oh well... what else am I going to do with the money?

This is going through Jodi-Lea who is a legal transhipper. The 25 includes health certificate and inspection by Thai fisheries, transport to Australia (costing me very little since it's part of a large shipment and I'm probably only contributing a dollar or two towards freight), all the required permits and paperwork, and Jodi-Lea's fee for the service. If you try to have the fish sent to you directly without going through quarantine, AQIS will x-ray the package, discover a motile fish skeleton in there, the fish will be confiscated and destroyed and you, the seller or both could have your backsides fined off. It's not worth it, the chance that they will seize and put down the fish is just way too high.

Obviously the fish price is variable... the import/quarantine fee is 20 for females and 25 for males, per fish. The shipping price will be more to you than to me (cairns area) as far as I know, probably around 40 - that's per box, and a box can hold 15 fish.

 

[x0x.love.you.x0x]

wow i wxpected it to be alot more than that. i susspect that that was all in $aus, its making me consider buying a fish fromaquabid and having it sent to nz. ill check out the prices but i susspect it would be tooo much more

 

[LauraFrog]

I don't know who the NZ transhippers are or even if you have one, so hard to know. If you don't have a legal transhipper who will receive and quarantine the fish, it's going to cost you a LOT more.

 

[x0x.love.you.x0x]

well ive heard of fish being imported in nz so i will do some research and find out if we have any

 

[electric yellow]

How are the fish after that length of travel? I would like to get some pretty ones off Aquabid but if the travelling is days long then i dunno. Are they in the bag the whole time? Or do they get taken out and given fresh water?

 

[LauraFrog]

What you have to remember is that very few aquarium fish are actually bred in Australia. Virtually all of the fish you see in your LFS are going through the same thing to get here, generally from farms in Asia. The bettas you see at your LFS are bred by the same people in Thailand who are breeding ones like the boy I'm about to fork out $90 to get my hands on. They are cheaper because they are not treated as well before you get them, and very little planning goes into the breeding (ie line breeding, genetics, careful choices of parents).

So all the bettas - whether they're being imported by wholesalers to sell to LFS, or by insane hobbyists willing to fork out a month's wages for them - go through about 2 days in a bag to get to Australia. (When you think about it, the bag contains a similar amount of water as the cups in pet stores and it is treated with ammo-lock - pet store cups aren't and the bettas sit in those for a week or more usually.) Then they are unpacked at the quarantine facility. Wholesale quarantiners ply their medicines very freely, leaving the fish destined for the LFS swimming in a toxic bath of chemicals. I believe that Jodi-Lea treats only when the fish is ill, but there may be a legal requirement for some of these medications to be used, I don't know. Jodi-Lea's fish are quarantined in individual 2L tanks. After 7 days, if the fish is healthy it is released from quarantine - that's when it gets sent to you, which is another day or two in a bag.

So when the fish get to you, they are in about the same condition as newly arrived fish at the LFS. Of course, there are a small number of fish that simply cannot handle this much stress, and Jodi-Lea specifically states that she is not responsible for fish that survive transport and quarantine but 'will not eat, breed or generally fail to thrive'. If this happens, you wear it. I have to say though, there are a lot of people on the Australian fish forums who have imported bettas, and the general feeling is that if you can afford it, do it. There are not many people who have had really bad experiences doing it, and who say it isn't worth it. The worst problem is with long finned fish (halfmoons) chewing their fins - this is virtually unpreventable, and the fish are still okay for breeding but not showing. This doesn't really matter, because most shows do not allow exhibition of fish you didn't breed yourself.

 

[electric yellow]

Mine would only be for my own tank at home. I just found it difficult to to know how to go about dealing with transhippes etc. I got scared when it told me i had to email 100 different people to arrange payments and what not.

 

[mfcclc]

I now have to take back my previous post on this topic about not being keen on double tails as i bought two female dt's earlier today, one of which i think is stunning, will try and get a pic up of her later.