Fish season is over.

[akudewan]

3 of my zebra danios died recently, So I had 3 remaining. As a good fish-keeper, I had done my home work, and I knew that zebras need to be in groups of 5 atleast. So I went to the market to get new zebars.

From one fish store to another, I kept looking, only to find that there were no danios. Then I asked the guy at one shop why there aren't any zebras in the market. He said that the zebras were all sold out, they'd be back during the next "season." After looking around and doing a little more research on this matter, I found that many fish in the markets are "seasonal"

Most danios, tetras and barbs hit the market only for a few weeks. Other fish like live-bearers, goldfish are usually available all the time.

Its hard to classify the "seasons". It doesn't follow any periodic pattern. At random a particular fish will be available in stores in large numbers, all over the city, and it will disappear in a few weeks. Then you wait for the next "batch" to arrive, so keep checking at fish shops all over the city!!!

I think there is only one fish-breeder in the whole of Bombay

 

[CFC]

A lot of the fish collecting seasons are governed by the wet/dry seasons of the locality they are collected from, for obvious reasons collecting fish during the wet season when there is several meters of floodwater on the rivers is next to impossible so all the fish which come from that region need to be collected during the low water period of the dry season. This is why on the forums here we often see explosions of questions on the same fish, the most recent one i noticed was a run on questions about Pimelodus pictus since it is currently south American collecting season and pretty soon the bichir questions will come flooding in as the African collecting season starts.

 

[akudewan]

But danios aren't caught from rivers, right?

 

[CFC]

Fast flowing mountain streams and small tributaries of rivers.

 

[Sky042]

Must be a regional thing for you.

Here just about everything is available all the time with the exception of rare pleco's and certain botias.

 

[CFC]

Common community fish such as bala sharks, tiger barbs, redtailed black sharks, neons etc are all farm bred in Asia so are available all year round, as are most common Cichlids from both Africa and the new world since they are easily bred in captivity. The seasons only affect wild caught fish such as loaches (botia's) catfish, uncommon Characins and oddballs so dont really affect many fish keepers.
Personally i know that if i miss out on a particular fish during its collecting season window then i will probably have to wait a whole year for them to be collected again

 

[akudewan]

Hmm...I guess it can't be helped then. Actually, most common fish such are zebra danios, tiger barbs etc are natives of India. I had actually seen tiger barbs eating a snake's skin in some river of some jungle in India (on the Discovery channel)

So I think I'll just buy a few mollies for now, and wait for the zebras to come next season