Is Fishing Keeping On The Decline

[FishBowl]

Hi All,

I am new to the forum. Back in the mid 90's I purchased an aquarium outfit that ran for about 6 years. I really enjoyed it! Around 2000 the apartment I was living at changed their rules and no longer allowed fish tanks. Now that I am a homeowner I want to get back into it again. I noticed that most of the aquarium retailers are gone. There used to be a lot of shops, but now only a few remain. They have limited equipment stock and none have acrylic tanks, they only sell glass. My main question is is fish keeping on the decline? Another question is why are acrylic tanks no longer available? I see they are available online. Are hobbist preferring glass over plastic?

 

[-FighterFishh]

Hi All,

I am new to the forum. Back in the mid 90's I purchased an aquarium outfit that ran for about 6 years. I really enjoyed it! Around 2000 the apartment I was living at changed their rules and no longer allowed fish tanks. Now that I am a homeowner I want to get back into it again. I noticed that most of the aquarium retailers are gone. There used to be a lot of shops, but now only a few remain. They have limited equipment stock and none have acrylic tanks, they only sell glass. My main question is is fish keeping on the decline? Another question is why are acrylic tanks no longer available? I see they are available online. Are hobbist preferring glass over plastic?

I don't think it's on decline. If anything, I think it's on it's way up. Easy to care for and maintain is surely the perfect pet?
Maybe it's just the retailers around you that don't get good business/don't get any acrylic tanks in. Maybe going further afield could get you more of a range

 

[jock2007-]

online you can get anything if you look hard enough !

but as for local shops im pretty sure they must be on the decline in some places, i live in Pembrokeshire and there used to be some really good LFS witch was really good, cause if the fish in 1 shop were not of good quality then you could just pop to the next 1, there used to be creamston aquatics > pets @ home > Pembroke garden centre > scales and tails in Milford haven , and 1 over by tenby , all within 15 miles of my home, now we have scales and tales , was in here the other day they had 1 plec and some neons and some live plants , not good when they used to be very good stock , pets @ home witch stock i do not like, they have has some fungus problem in there tanks for about 3 mounts and they still have it now, + i seen a dead fish witch was in a tank for 2 days then i told the guy to sort it out, Pembroke garden centre has now gone , creamston aquatics is still open but they have no stock so looks like there closing down anyway,

so Pembrokeshire is not looking that gr8 for getting good quality fish at the moment,

 

[simonas]

I;d say fishkeeping is well on the up however shops in general are on the decline.

specialist shops like aquarium shops suffer the same as any business in these difficult times with high rents wagers overheads and the mark up just isn;t that good to allow too many shops anymore

 

[snowflake311]

Its not that less people keep fish it's the economy and online shopping. You can find great deals online deals the little mom and pop shops can not fight with. Also many of us have turn to buying hard to find fish online.

Fish keepers are still around it just times are a changing.