Old Newbie

[fishtankaquariums.biz]

Hello all, I'm what I call an old newbie. I use to have a 20 gallon aquarium way back in the day (1972) as a teenager. Kept sword tails mainly. So now I have inherited a whole pile of aquariums 9 x 30 gallon , 6 x 40 gallon, 2 x 70 gallon and 3 x 120 gallon aquariums. My uncle had an aquarium/fish store a number of years ago and shut it down when he got sick (rip). All the aquariums have fluval pumps and the lids/lighting/heaters stands. I put one aquarium in my living room and haven't put anything in it yet other than gravel. My son has had an aquarium for 3 or 4 years now and has expressed an interest in starting some kind of breeding set up in the hopes of making some money and perhaps over time setting up an aquarium/fish store shop. I did a tiny bit of research on if its a good idea to bother with or feasible to do with the expectation of making some money. My uncle did all right with it back 15 years ago. Seems you have to go big or don't bother is the standard answer. No one ever explains how big though? Are we talking 10 tanks, 20, 50, etc??? and what type of fish would be the best to target seems to be in question. I live in Canada (ontario)and I noticed that there is a big chain store called Big Als which may be the serious competition. so I'm looking for any suggestions, thoughts etc.

 

[Curiosity101]

Well I don't know what the demand is like over where you are.

But personally from what I've seen you either have to specialise in relatively high retail value fish and can do it small scale at home.

Or like you said you have to go really big to be able to get the volume of sales to cover the overheads. Personally in the UK I wouldn't recommend anyone starting a fish shop (sad I know). But to start it as a proper business selling hardware and such aswell... it's so hard to compete with online retailers.
However private breeders are great, I often have a quick look on the uk aquarist-classifieds to see if there is anyone in my area breeding the fish I'm after.

Fish that tend to get a reasonable price over here:
Ornamental/Rare catfish - perfect example is the zebra pleco
Rare/new colour morphs of certain dwarf cichlids
Higher quality shrimp such as blue tiger shrimp, SS Grade crystal red shrimp. All the new sulawesi shrimp...
But pretty much anything rare, pretty and relatively small is likely to get a good price.