Captive bred fish: Please Respond

[SuperFudge]

Steve,

Costs are Prohibitive for anything beyond our systems and not even comparable to fry born and reared in our home tanks.

A couple of years ago,I purchased the equipment to do so for a small 500 gallon operation.(my intended start up size).

After research on my own,aswell as working with N.R.C (national research council),it was clear to both of us that after labour,maintanence costs, shipping, losses, possible markets (NRC`s end) and a net profit,it just wasnt possible....with an anuall profit of $6100 per 500 gal.(average)

You could say,well,we could have 5000 gals then.
This would be beyond (our) market potential by far,as compared to our American neighbors and relating to the numbers and species that can be sucsessfully reared reliably.

The next consideration instead,was raising W/C juviniles to marketable size, this wouldve increased variety aswell as possible markets.
After headed in this direction for a while I also declined,per gallon profit is decreased with variety as they need more space for more species.
Considerable losses with the purchase of juveniles aswell coupled with the costs of importing them remained the same.

Then it just became an ethical issue for me... again,what/who was i benifitting ?
As i would still be collecting wild caught,with only a slightly higher sucsess rate than an LFS.

In the end,i will leave it up to home scale guys Such as andrew,and to our neighbors,as Troy`s link points to,and support them fully.

Marc.

[ 23 June 2002, 19:54: Message edited by: Superfudge ]