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The End of an Era...
- Thread starter AbbeysDad
- Start date
otterblue
Fish Crazy
That's a shame.
Alice B
Fish Herder
My favorite local fish store closed in December 1999. I shop at one, that does a fair quarantine and I will buy fish from him. but not many anymore. The days of weekly saltwater fish purchase ended in 1999. But I have stayed friends with the owners of that shop. I'm sorry. I'd love to get some healthy swordtails but you are probably too far away
Darn that's too bad. I hope that you don't completely abandon the hobby.
I hate hearing stuff like this. Best of luck in your future endeavors Man .
Edit : I hate to climb up on my soapbox and rant but I can’t help myself. These big box stores and Pet Superama’s have taken root and flourished because we patronize them. Wake up people ! Does anyone these days remember the word BOYCOTT ? Don’t go in there and buy their capitalist wares. I have two local Mom and Pops in my town. Sometimes they don’t have what I want but they order it for me. I have to wait and it might be a buck more than PetsMart but I don’t care. My personal finances are not such that saving fifty cents on fish food is going to make or break me. This is a frivolous frill hobby that I want to do and not have to do. The local yokels here are doing their little non corporate pet shops as their main livelihood and they need my business. Not having my business might mean they go stock shelves at Wal-Mart or flip burgers to keep the wolf away from the door but they choose to stick their thumbs in the eye sockets of bloated corporate America and go it alone. I respect and admire that. Right here in little Billings Montana a Petco is going to open fifty feet away from a PetsMart. Yes ! Right next door ! So if you are so in love with saving a nickel and wandering through gigantic aisles and shelves of superfluous consumer goods made overseas by laborers making starvation wages go into that cesspool of capitalism and enrich the fat stockholders who are just bums leaching off the fat bankers and their scams. I will patronize the only true endangered species - the independent locally owned small businessman.
Edit : I hate to climb up on my soapbox and rant but I can’t help myself. These big box stores and Pet Superama’s have taken root and flourished because we patronize them. Wake up people ! Does anyone these days remember the word BOYCOTT ? Don’t go in there and buy their capitalist wares. I have two local Mom and Pops in my town. Sometimes they don’t have what I want but they order it for me. I have to wait and it might be a buck more than PetsMart but I don’t care. My personal finances are not such that saving fifty cents on fish food is going to make or break me. This is a frivolous frill hobby that I want to do and not have to do. The local yokels here are doing their little non corporate pet shops as their main livelihood and they need my business. Not having my business might mean they go stock shelves at Wal-Mart or flip burgers to keep the wolf away from the door but they choose to stick their thumbs in the eye sockets of bloated corporate America and go it alone. I respect and admire that. Right here in little Billings Montana a Petco is going to open fifty feet away from a PetsMart. Yes ! Right next door ! So if you are so in love with saving a nickel and wandering through gigantic aisles and shelves of superfluous consumer goods made overseas by laborers making starvation wages go into that cesspool of capitalism and enrich the fat stockholders who are just bums leaching off the fat bankers and their scams. I will patronize the only true endangered species - the independent locally owned small businessman.
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Bummer. Dude was 70, so I guess it was inevitable. Now you may get a chance to enjoy the hobby aspects. 300 fish a year- which then dispersed into new tanks and had their own offspring- You have brought the world much pleasure,
Hope things are okay?
300 swordtails is one bag to a wholesaler, but look at what pleasure it was for a breeder. Our priorities are all wrong.
I used to sell a few hundred livebearers and killies per year - mostly wild type livebearers. I shut down a few years ago when shipping costs combined with an increasing conservatism of interests in our hobby slowed things down too much.
You face a choice. You can sell tanks and move on, or you can keep the tanks and simply keep tanks for what drove you into the hobby in the first place - the enjoyment. I'm glad I chose the second option, and through it, I found other ways to make the hobby cover its costs. Even if I hadn't though - there is a lot of enjoyment to be had in a totally uncommercial hobby. I certainly reduced the size of my set up for a few years, but as I found new areas interesting, and with retirement, I kind of expanded out again.
I used to sell a few hundred livebearers and killies per year - mostly wild type livebearers. I shut down a few years ago when shipping costs combined with an increasing conservatism of interests in our hobby slowed things down too much.
You face a choice. You can sell tanks and move on, or you can keep the tanks and simply keep tanks for what drove you into the hobby in the first place - the enjoyment. I'm glad I chose the second option, and through it, I found other ways to make the hobby cover its costs. Even if I hadn't though - there is a lot of enjoyment to be had in a totally uncommercial hobby. I certainly reduced the size of my set up for a few years, but as I found new areas interesting, and with retirement, I kind of expanded out again.
Alice B
Fish Herder
I used to service aquariums, but getting healthy stock for my customers became too difficult, and having had a couple of bad quarantine disasters when I couldn't get the right meds and the old ones didn't work, I quit taking on new tanks, and retired the old ones as it became time - their office changing, or I no longer had other accounts in that area. I don't miss it. I still service a 100 gallon tank, but I get along well with the customer and I was able to safely restock their Buenos Aires Tetras that were dying off, so we shall muddle on thru. The owner of that company and I are of an age, will probably both retire about the same time and he'll be due for a new tank around then, somehow I think will just close that account too.
I enjoy the smaller tanks I have at my house now, I'm learning again, the diseases all changed. And keeping corydoras on sand was something I'd never done. Although I had cories live a long time on gravel, so I'm playing with that, I don't care if my tanks are gorgeous, I spent 20 years being sure tanks looked gorgeous. I can relax and see who I can get to breed. Tries species I never did. You might have fun with German Blue Rams
I enjoy the smaller tanks I have at my house now, I'm learning again, the diseases all changed. And keeping corydoras on sand was something I'd never done. Although I had cories live a long time on gravel, so I'm playing with that, I don't care if my tanks are gorgeous, I spent 20 years being sure tanks looked gorgeous. I can relax and see who I can get to breed. Tries species I never did. You might have fun with German Blue Rams
kiko
Fishaholic
why not just list them on offerup?
in canada kijiji works like a charm...I don't sell more shrimp because I can't breed enough of them
I'm actually making a 20gal tank just for shrimp breeding because they sell like popcorn around here
if I was in a house I would probably try my hand at amano's as they breed by the thousands
so even if I got a dollar/each for them it'd still be worth it as stores sell them for like 4/5 bucks
instead of fish..you might want to think about shrimp...everyone buys them...not many can keep them when starting out
which means return customers until they actually manage xD
in canada kijiji works like a charm...I don't sell more shrimp because I can't breed enough of them
I'm actually making a 20gal tank just for shrimp breeding because they sell like popcorn around here
if I was in a house I would probably try my hand at amano's as they breed by the thousands
so even if I got a dollar/each for them it'd still be worth it as stores sell them for like 4/5 bucks
instead of fish..you might want to think about shrimp...everyone buys them...not many can keep them when starting out
which means return customers until they actually manage xD
popcorn shrimp?
Can you talk to the new shop and say, hey, I breed livebearers that are high quality. Do you want to try them? I will give you 10 for free and if you like them, buy more.
At the very least try to keep 6-10 nice females of each and a male and put them in ponds for summer. Maybe things will change in a few months.
At the very least try to keep 6-10 nice females of each and a male and put them in ponds for summer. Maybe things will change in a few months.
Pet supplies plus is a chain store here in the US. I doubt they would buy local.
Good to see you online
It's great to see you here, @Colin_T
The large shareholder pet chains in North America purchase centrally, then distribute out to stores. In some cases, they oblige wholesalers to deliver to stores in an area if they want the business, and the same fish in the same numbers have to be delivered to each store. Managers often have no leeway to make choices. One US chain used to (and may still) tell managers which fish went into which tanks in the identical, numbered tank set ups they had. Everything was based on detailed market studies.
I was on vacation one time when the Cad dollar was strong and my wife and mother in law were doing a lot of shopping. I kept sticking my snout into the stores for a national pet chain, because I kept seeing them everywhere. They were identical. Platys in one tank, mollies beside them, etc. All the same hybrids, even the same diseases. It's a serious reason why US aquarists have so many fewer offline choices for fish compared to other places I've been.
One store accepting fish from a local breeder would be a contractual problem and the local manager would get roasted for that.
The large shareholder pet chains in North America purchase centrally, then distribute out to stores. In some cases, they oblige wholesalers to deliver to stores in an area if they want the business, and the same fish in the same numbers have to be delivered to each store. Managers often have no leeway to make choices. One US chain used to (and may still) tell managers which fish went into which tanks in the identical, numbered tank set ups they had. Everything was based on detailed market studies.
I was on vacation one time when the Cad dollar was strong and my wife and mother in law were doing a lot of shopping. I kept sticking my snout into the stores for a national pet chain, because I kept seeing them everywhere. They were identical. Platys in one tank, mollies beside them, etc. All the same hybrids, even the same diseases. It's a serious reason why US aquarists have so many fewer offline choices for fish compared to other places I've been.
One store accepting fish from a local breeder would be a contractual problem and the local manager would get roasted for that.
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