Buying coral and fish from USA

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Colby Bay

You are very luck because it is a fact that you need a cites permit to bring any hard corals, live rock, seahorses etc. If you know the boarder guards buy first name and they let you bring it across, kudos for you. But that is not the norm.

Also corals are protected hence why you need the cities permit to bring them across the boarder.

+1. The difference between coral smuggling and legal coral purchasing is quite literally a piece of paper. Doesn't matter if the coral is perfectly legal to own in both Canada and the US, its threatened status in the wild, or whether or not it was aquacultured in your aunt's grow out tanks in Buffalo. If you get busted bringing something across without the proper documentation for that species, you are by definition smuggling it.