Zebras in US ( Aquabid )

[Des]

As to the price- It's an open free market. That means the seller's free to charge anything they like and the buyer's free to pay anything they like. If a seller prices himself out of the market, he wont' sell any fish. If he underprices, he's also making a mistake. And if a buyer sets his price ceiling too low, he'll never get any fish at any size!

Ed_R,

Totally agree with your comments as above.
I have been caught on both sides of the fence.
As a seller, When selling livestock, eg fish, birds or whatever, do I sell to the petshop( which I know has overheads, staff salaries etc) at one third of their selling price, for them to take a 200% markup or sell directly to the public either at the going rate or slighly less. I know what I would do !!! I have also sold budgies to a pet shop where they put a 400% mark up.
As a buyer I have a choice, if buying catfish for example , more often than not, of which shop has the best stock and best price, and therefore which one I buy from. Sometimes good stock or rare stock, commands higher prices, it is my choice whether I buy or not.I may try and bargain, but if the price is fixed, It is my decision whether I buy or not.What use is it moaning about the prices?. . I have recently bought catfish off the adds in Aquarist classifieds at less than half the price of the fish shops. If available, why not?
I have also been taken for a ride by dealers. Many years ago, when I bred good quality Discus, I "sold" my first stock of youngsters to a Famous Discus dealer in Highgate,London, who has also written a lot of Discus books. He told me to come back the following week for my money, which was a few hundred pounds, so naively I said OK. I went back the following week ,which was over an hours journey by public transport and he said" My accounts books are with my accountant, I need you to come back next week.So back again I went ,the following week. The shop was closed and empty. I was told by the nextdoor shopkeeper that he had emigrated to Thailand. So now , after this terrible experience,when I do a deal, it is always money first or no deal.
To end I would say As Buyers or Sellers we all have a CHOICE to CHOOSE. Just use this Choice wisely.!!!,

Shell231,
How can Zebras at £25 be a waste of money . If you think it is steep, at £25 for 1.5" fish, it is your choice. I know what I would have done if I were in your position, but I am not !!! I bought a mixed bunch of L046 in Dec for £70 each and some were 1.5". There again that was my choice !!!!

Guest,
I have bought a minimum of 6 young fish when I was in a position that I have been unable to sex fish whether plecs or not, to enable me to have some of each sex.

and Rob, mine is a bud too, but any beer will do, I am not fussy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!lol: Will join Sid for a beer at the discus show later in the year. How about you?

Regards,
Des.

[Shell231]

Des, i now realise after carefull consideration lol i am going to ring this bloke back up and ask and see if i can purchase some more zebs! the reason i didn't buy them in the first place was lack of knowledge really and i wasn't prepared to wait 1 year and how ever long to see what sex they were and then swap then around and then try to spawn them, i am a women that like things to happen yesterday, and now i know so much more about them i realise i was stupid, so thats why i am chasing them up again

[Des]

Hi Shell231,

I'm glad you have seen the light , and hope you are successful in getting a real bargain, if still available.
So, the jokes about Essex girls are true and based on fact then ? lol
And heres the trick question, When your zebras finally breed , will you sell the youngsters for £25, lol, $100 or the going rate whatever that may be.......

Des

[Barbie]

Wow, that time zone difference thing can really make for a long read when you get up in the morning!

I agree with everyone's points on all of this, truth be known. There was a long winded pissing match about it at plecofanatics a few months back, also. People whining that anyone with zebra fry was just a money hungry price gouger and what not. I don't know about you all, but noone gave me my breeders.

I wasn't trying to offend anyone, and I definitely wasn't attempting to use my moderator status inappropriately. I have asked Rob to remove me as a moderator over this, actually. He asked me to consider that decision, and I'm going to take a few days and do just that. Life is too short to be out volunteering to take on more stress, from my viewpoint. I really enjoy the board here, but I was not personally trying to force anyone to my way of thinking, just arguing my point in what I thought was the "tone" of the thread. I'm sorry again if I offended anyone by it.

I would still really love to hear from every member what they think the price for fry should be. It's easy to be critical about someone's decision when it's not a decision you have to make, IME.

Shipping that box of my babies to Ed was an eye opening experience for me. I hate shipping fish anyway, but I was a nervous wreck the entire day. I've never had a fish die in shipment when I pack them, not even the box they lost for 3 days, but it's going to happen at some point and the idea really bothers me until the box is actually in the hands of the people I've sent it to. I wish I could just give preference to people able to drive to fetch them, in all honesty. I just can't. I feel sometimes that I'm going to be "owing" the people I put on the waiting list for these fish something for the next year or two. I just can't make enough. I think if I had 100 breeders I STILL wouldn't be able to make enough to satisfy just the people that track me down and contact me!

I don't post that I even HAVE zebras at planet catfish. Just with spawning the L260 I was literally deluged with private messages and emails. I sincerely want to help people be successful with their fish, but altruism can make me overworked to the point that I don't enjoy the hobby anymore. Sometimes it's a fine line to try to stay to this side of, to be honest.

Barbie

[Ed_R]

all eyes and ears, ed. Largest fry are a little over 1.25 inches. Others are around .75 to 1.00 inches (including tail, TL). Great to hear you were able to get some zebras from barbie.

Very interesting discussion.

Ken

Let me know when you're ready to sell a few,. Ken.

[Lampy]

This has turned into a very interesting thread.

Right now I don't have the problem with pricing zebra fry, I sold all my zebras when they came in... some I had for awhile, and they did breed, but I have none now.

I do have L236's, L173's and L345's that will be put to the test, but they are a ways off from spawning I think.

People come to my home (where my fish are) frequently to pick up their fish. I don't mind this, but I do not encourage *shoppers* as this takes valuable time away from my maintenance activities, and my family.

Many people come to pick up their fish, and are really happy with what I offer, and the prices I charge. Others, ask me not once.. not twice.. but several times over the hour or so they are here.. to give them a deal. Local customers get a deal anyway.. I pay the state sales taxes for them. I give them the styros that I cannot ship with for free, while everyone else pays for them. Yet they still act offended if I will not make them a deal because they are buying so much ($200 total is not alot to pay for my specialty fish, I'm sorry!!!!)

I often wonder... how these people would feel if I went to their workplace... and ask them to take lower pay for whatever they were doing.. since they were going to be doing it for a long time... or somesuch convoluted logic. I have a family to feed, and many fish to keep healthy until they sell/spawn/die. No one re-imburses me if the fish dies after 1 day, only DOA. No one gives me my money back if the exporter ups and disappears. No one reimburses me if the airlines decides that the insurance I put on the fish is to be split evenly over two boxes... even tho one box is worth $500 and the other $1500. No one reimburses me if the exporters substitute me-too fish for my saleable ones.

I'm not complaining... things happen in life. But there are reasons why we charge what we charge. Not all of it is money grabbing, some is just trying to stay in business. Who else is going to bring in all the strange plecos, cories, etc if we don't? I get calls frequently from people that desparately want a certain fish and only can get it if I import it. They expect me to pay for a whole box of them when I can only sell them 2, or 2 pairs, or 6. I try hard to help these people as I know how it is to want a fish badly, know it's available, but not be able to get it. I'm barely staying even most of the time. I've had to change how I do business lately, but luckily for my customers, I've learned over the past few years how to do things more efficiently, get the fish people want so that I'm not carrying unused stock, and how to get the desireables, and get them to the people that will appreciate them and breed them.

Whew!! sorry for the download... but it's a subject that is a bit of a sore point...

*driving off into the sunset in my 8 year old truck.. not a Lexus*

[SanDiegoFishes]

As someone who has bought fish from Kevin, I can state that he is awesome! He is totally ethical, a lovely man to talk to, his fish are healthy and perfect, and you can tell he loves the hobby. I have quite a few "Kevin" fish in my tanks right now, with more on the way soon. You cannot go wrong with Kevin, so anyone looking for some nice, healthy F1 Zebras should take a peek at his auction!
Best, Barb

[Shell231]

Des, I would probably sell for the going rate, but i will see if and when the time comes! less of the essex girl jokes lol

[Tom26000]

I don't blame any shop/person for selling a Zebra at any price if someone is willing to hand over the cash. However, I would be interested to know when those aquarists breeding zebras feel that they cross over the line from a hobbiest to a supplier of zebras?

What I am trying to say is as a hobbiest you own your fish because you like/love them and breeding is often either an accident or deliberate to add extra interest/enjoyment to the more experienced aquarist. For example, I sell young kribs every now and then for pence without ever stopping to work out the running costs, losses etc etc. If I did work out the running costs etc I would be trying to sell them at shop prices and would obviously fail due to this particular species being common and cheap. With zebras this is different because you have a fish that is VERY rare.

Generally speaking it is human nature to want to make some money, but it is also generally human nature not to want I don't blame any hobbiest making money from something they love, what better thing to do!?

What I am trying to say is, there is nothing wrong in admiting that you want to make plenty of cash from selling home bred zebras, but it is human nature (generally) not to want to admit this when LOADS of people want them, but don't want to part with so much of their hard earned cash!

Its just the age old story of supply and demand.

Tom

[INXS]

Interesting,
as for what I have seen it seems zebras are VERY hard to come across. Even if you do want them it is almost impossible to find them, Aquabid is one spot that sometimes has them and there are unfortunatly some crooks on there who will rip people off - I have found that out the hard way.

The original post was to comment on the seller and his integrity to help out potential customers by alerting them that it is indeed an honest seller. I think this is far better then wasting space writing about crooked ones. Thanks for the heads up Barbie.

If you do come across any zebras it seems the prices are about (IMO):
for F1 fry expect $100-150 a piece.
For Larger F1s $150 or so
For F0s (if you should come across any) $200-300
These are prices I have seen people pay and ask - there are other prices too but IMHO prices under those figures are good deals and over are on the expensive side.

Some of the prices I have seen people list in the Selling forum on this site suggest 100-200 pounds a piece at todays rate of $1.88 to a pound it would be $188-$376!

Also bear in mind that many have complained (this forum also) that when bidding on/ordering "cheap" fish they were ripped off or the fact that the seller shipped all the other fish they ordered and told them the zebras were out of stock.
It seems the trick of luring people to order other fish by listing zebras very cheap even if you don't have them is a way some people do business.

We all had to pay a good amount for our stock and should anything ever happen it would be very expensive to replace them not to mention the cost of keeping them and the time spent. In a business sence it would be hard to make ends meet by being a breeder but it is something I think we all think about to justify the time and money we spend.

I am glad that people like Kevin, Barbie,Julie and others are marketing their stock since it makes it possible for some of us to have the fish we enjoy - if they kept it all how would we get some?

And thanks for the Board to Rob!
It really is a labour of love as most of us would never come close to recouping our money but the enjoyment makes us forget the price.
One of the main reasons I keep zebras was after reading Robs account of his spawning with pictures from day to day. Thanks!

I think Barbies idea of listing what everyone sees as a going rate is good and will give us a better idea of what to expect and also people who may want zebras as to what they can expect to pay. But remember - if your buddy Joe sells you a couple for $10 it isn't really something which is avaiable to all and not a fair comparison.

In closing this rambling I would ask this:
If every fish was free and had the same availability, would you still keep the zebras? I would.