breeding fish for profit

[thegatti]

Does anyone here breed fish for profit instead of just a hobby? If you do, what fish do you breed? I was thinking about breeding some guppies to sell cheaply. Do you think I would get rid of them easy enough if they were a couple of bucks each?

What fish are good to breed for this reason? (no I am not interested in a get rich quick scheme lol)

[Callatya]

I can just feel the long term hobbyists here smiling to themselves Are you sure you want to know?

I can tell you that at least half of us have thought about it at some stage or other, and a few others have tried and thought better of it. I can maybe think of a handful that look to be successful, but it is a seriously tricky thing to get right.

First off, unless you are breeding something show quality, rare, hard to breed, or no longer on the import list, you are going to find it hard going. For a pet shop to buy most fish, you are looking at somewhere between $0.20 and say $12. Your average betta is about $2, your guppy is about $0.90, give or take. They are often reluctant to accept fish from local breeders due to the disease risk posed to their tanks, let alone buy fish. If they do, sometimes it is for store credit, or as an exchange. Sometimes they'll give you current wholesale prices for the fish. Of course, that would change if you had a stunning strain of cichlids and were selling to a shop that specialised in rare or top shelf fish, but those shops are few and far between, and they are generally even more picky about who they take fish from as they have much more to lose if something goes wrong.

Selling to the hobbyist can be better, but fish people who want to buy from breeders are pretty ruthless and will want snazzy quality breeders with some information on parentage etc. They will pay for it though, providing you have the right fish I *think* the going price for a 2-3mo betta from imported parents is somewhere around $10-20, depending on quality. I know some people get more, but lets just go with that for now. Once you take out the original import cost of the pair, food, electricity, water, water additives, your time, etc etc for the 3 month period that you've had to raise them to a saleable size (pet shops won't take runts, and hobbyists need fish to be displaying true form/gender and be old enough to ship), there isn't really much profit left. If you really want to make a go of it for show quality fish, you should also factor show entries/shipping, membership of whatever societies will give you some street cred and advertising opportunities to your target audience, and spending way too much time on forums and club sites trying to get your name known.

I'm pretty sure it can be done, but it would be something that would need very careful planning.

IMO you are best off breeding because you love it, BUT getting the nicest fish you can afford so that when you do breed them and the babies do grow up, you can get a little more back for them than you otherwise would have. With nice pair of guppies in a rural area, yeah, I'd say you probably could get a couple of bucks for them if you sold privately It might also be good to look at cichlids (I hear convicts breed like rabbits) or larger livebearers like sailfin mollies or swordtails.

[Bettarazzi]

You need to develop a strong relationship with your local fish shops. You need to get to the point where you can have an honest and open conversation about what it's like in the aquarium industry and what their expectations might be of you as a supplier.

About 15 years ago I had a relationship like that with a fish shop. The owner would take as many bettas, angels and killifish as I could produce. He paid me in cash not store credit. Anything I wanted in his shop he would give me at the same price that he got them for. I don't think I ever got to the point where I could say I was making a profit. At best I think their food was costing me nothing. I still had to fork out for heating.

Before you get to the point of deciding whether you want to make a go of breeding fish as a business you need to have lived the life of a breeder for a while. You need to feel what it's like to have 2 tanks of guppies, 2 tanks of bettas growing out, 40 juveniles in jars, 8 adult breeders that are finickly eaters and in various states of questionable health, 50 adults that you're trying to sell and need to photograph and post on forums and on your website, 3 tanks of fry that still need to be fed baby brineshrimp twice a day. And what I've described is still only a hobbyist setup. How many times will you have to multiply that in order to sell enough to make a living? That's a lot of water changes, photos to be taken, fish to pack and ship, emails to answer.

Don't be completely discouraged by what I'm saying though. Your personal circumstances may be completely different. Just go slow, try not to incur too many expenses while you're still investigating how feasible this is.

[Stuart Elflett]

Yeah, I'll second all of that - the fish to breed are something that's highly desired, and has good yields of fry, but isn't too fragile or delicate - that means things like Peppermint Bristlenose are really good choices, because they go for between $50 and $90 in most LFS... they might give you $10 store credit for them, if you're really doing well, and you can sell them privately for $15-$17 each... if you could breed 20 fry from a pair every month or so, you'd be doing quite well... enough breeding pairs, seperate tanks, the time to care for them and the odd need for meds, electricity bill for heating and filtering the tanks, etc, you could do OK... if you could get a breeding pair of rarer, more desirable plecos - let's say zebra pleco's, for the sake of discussion, you may be lucky enough to get the pair for as little as $1500, more likely $2000, and if you could get them to breed you'd be looking at a couple of hundred per fish, if you grew them to say 5cm...

Guppies, on the other hand... well, I've got one 60L tank with guppies... they breed like flies... all of my friends have guppies... I've given guppies to the school... not one LFS around Adelaide is interested in local bred 'common' guppies, because if they wanted them all they need is a males and three females and they can breed around 60 a month themselves, without any effort at all... a couple of places breed guppies just to show the babies to people, to *sell* guppies as easy fish to breed and keep... the harder it is to get the fish to breed to what you want, the better the market is for it... but even with some hard to breed species, you rapidly get to the point where supplied fish are available for less than your costs in breeding them...

Line bred is the way to go - like the experiments here with Betta's, if you can breed good guppies with a particular parentage, you may find a market... you need to manage them heavily to keep the lineage true, and to keep the strain strong because guppies love to inbreed... lol

By far the best way to breed fish is because YOU want to, not to try and make money from it... if you enjoy doing it, it's it's own reward - if it's a chore, it's a safe bet that you won't make enough money from it to make it worthwhile... I have a friend overseas who was asked if he'd like to be the in house breeder for an aquarium - he jumped at the chance... he gets access to their breeding room, can keep some for himself, breeds up stock for the shop, does the water changes and maintenance of the tanks, - and has no time left for his own tanks... it's an 'experience' based position, so he doesn't get paid anything for it, other than getting some free fish out of it... on the other hand, I know a petshop here that bred it's own stock, guppies, cories, goldfish, danios, etc - she also carried cats, dogs, birds and mice... she closed down a few months back because it just wasn't worth opening up every day, once you consider rent, electricity, etc - and those fish were effectively 'free' stock to sell...

[thegatti]

So much for the "It's easy, go for it" answer I was looking for.

Could I put an ad in the paper for cheap fish and see how I go from there?

I'm pretty sure I have a female guppy who is pregnant but I don't know when she will drop.

It would be good if I could at least get some money back from all the stuff I have to buy for my betta fry. It takes a lot of cash and I don't have a job (I do get some money from the government though).

[Callatya]

I'd probably try an ad in the local school newsletter rather than the local paper, it is probably a fair bit cheaper. :)

[Beano]

Or you could advertise in the free paper - most suburbs around Brisbane get a free paper on wednesdays. I think it's free to advertise in those isn't it?

[kitstyles]

is impossible to make profit on breeding bettas .... unless u live in thailand xD

[brettc777]

possible... if you get kitz to work for you for 10 cents per hour lol

[Stuart Elflett]

I saw angels for sale in the classifieds here in Adelaide - 50c sized fish for $3 each - spoke to the seller, he'd made enough to cover the ad itself that weekend... Mind you, they do now have free ads in Friday's paper - so he could well be making anywhere up to about $18 a weekend out of it, if he's still doing them...

I was inquiring about selling some blue rams, 'cos they had lots of eggs and I wanted to find out if there was any interest - as long as I could supply 40+ at once, I could have .90c - $1 for them - store credit... they sell in those LFS for $10.95 and $12.95 respectively... lol

As I said, I've given everyone who wants some, guppies... I even gave the school after hours care a tank AND a batch of guppies so they could have fish - they've been giving fish to the kids when the tank is too full... guppies would definitely be a challenge to sell... unless you know someone with a hungry cod or grunter, needing live food... they'd take 'em in quantity...

[thegatti]

Angel fish seem to be pretty popular I think. I had 3, but 1 died and I cannot tell if both are males or not. they are only little. Are they tricky to breed? They are quite interesting fish. I have them in with guppies, tetras and one bronze catfish.

How would you breed tetras?

[Bettarazzi]

It's difficult to sex angels. Most breeders get about six and then wait for them to pair off. They need a fair bit of room though so you'll need a 3ft at the minimum. I did spawn a pair of angels in a 2ft tall, but they were never really happy in there. I think I was just lucky that I got babies at all.