WHERE TO SOURCE YOUR FISH
With so many options available, which is the best choice of supplier for your livestock? We look at some of the options.
Bricks and mortar shops
Local stores are the obvious choice for many. You can pick the exact fish you want, and have the advantage of seeing them in real time to check for the likes of damage, deformities or diseases. There’s also minimal transport time involved in getting the fish back home and safe.
On the downside, not all local stores are that good, and your experience of the hobby might only be as good as the most knowledgeable member of staff there. If they can’t look after their own fish, you might be buying poor
quality, undernourished, or wholly unsuitable livestock. Legally trading stores will have a Pet Shop License which offer some credentials, but be wary of ‘shed sellers’ that aren’t trading through the usual channels. Most brick-and-mortar stores have some sort of policy regarding fish that die shortly after purchase, often including prompt water testing to find out exactly what has happened, which brings many aquarists peace of mind.
Online shops
The online marketplace is a mix of established brick-and-mortar stores selling fish online, as well as dedicated online-only sellers.
Online purchasing is largely flying blind, though you can request to see a video or photos of the exact fish you intend to buy—images of fish advertised on a website can be a mix of library images and actual livestock. Without seeing the fish, you can’t check for diseases of deformities, and you can’t verify the likes of sexed pairs, so you’re entirely in the hands of the seller.
Stick with reputable online sellers and you’ll be okay. These stores are forced to trade on their reputations and try their hardest to make sure everything runs smoothly.
Online sellers may carry fish that you cannot source locally, or you may simply have no local store (or at least a decent one) to visit.
Check the water conditions of an online seller before purchasing, as they may have a totally different pH and hardness to your own tank, and this needs to be factored in.
Note also that because of set carriage costs, it makes more sense to buy fish online in bulk rather than in ones or twos (or to buy expensive, specialist fish). Just buying five neon tetra will be very costly in freight. You’ll need to be around the receive the fish when they arrive, but modern packing methods at least mean that they’ll arrive warm.
Club auctions
Club members are absolute hobby nerds and often have the best fish around. They also tend to have a high turnover of fish, keeping and breeding (or showing) a species before moving it along at a club auction.
Becoming a club member will expose you to species that retailers cannot reliably source or may be reluctant to stock. For unusual livebearers, cichlids or catfish, clubs are the place to be. Membership will usually be required, and meets can be infrequent, or might not fit into your timescale. The range of fish will also be restricted (often to the club’s specialist subject) and the fish may have some niche requirements that you should understand before bidding on them. Bidding wars aren’t unknown, so for the most desired fish you might end up paying close to retail prices, but for the most part there are bargains in abundance.
Private sellers/ classified ads
Aquarist Classifieds is an online marketplace for selling unwanted/surplus fish and the spoils of one’s own breeding efforts. While you’re unlikely to find many bread and butter community fish on there, it’s a great source of large and unusual species, as well as fish that have been long settled into aquarium life.
Prices are usually reasonable (though occasional chancers do inflate the value of their fish) but on the flipside many sellers offer a collection only option and are reluctant to post or deliver fish (and, just as with formal online retailers, postage may be expensive). Guarantees are the grey area, as while you may get exactly what you ordered, if anything happens (if it arrives dead, or promptly breaks out in a disease) then you might be left out of pocket, pending the payment option you’ve chosen to use.
eBay sellers
Someone selling fish on eBay could be from any of the above, or none at all. Unlicensed ‘shed sellers’ slip through the cracks to sell livestock alongside licensed sellers, while breeders and enthusiasts also offload their excess fish this way. Always research any seller before purchase, and never trust the images—the majority are library images or pictures stolen from the internet. Ask to see the exact fish before purchase, and expect a range of competence from sellers. There’s a chance that if you’re dealing with an absolute novice trying their luck at breaking in to fish sales, you won’t even get the species that’s listed.
That said, there are some superb fish to be had from eBay. It just means you need to research the seller hard (check all of those reviews) and be prepared for the unknown.