How much do you get for your ocellaris?

[Tommyc]

Thanks for the link RCS. That was along the lines of what I was looking for. Unfortunately, David's right in that it appears it's not going anywhere.

Conogressional Status of the Coral Reef Conservation Act

It's sat around for a year and a half and there's not a counterpart in the Senate. Give it three or four more months and it'll officially be taken off of the "to do" list. Looks like it was well written though.

I checked the CITES appendices too....it's pretty thin on fish and I haven't found anything that talked about a move afoot to add to it. Haven't seen anything on the Coral Reef Task Force's website about restricting imports of various fish either.

Sorry to take this thread a little off topic. Sounds like no one out there is getting more than $6.5 for their clowns and that's not going to change for a while.

Tom

 

[colby]

Quesion for y'all....so if the Ocellaris will sell for an average of lets say five bucks and according to the general concensus one can sell virtually as many Ocellaris as he/she could raise...why isn't "everyone doing it?" I only ask because say a small scale breeder was able to supply around 500 Ocellaris a month. According to the estimate of $5 a fish this would equal $2500 a month correct? Granted cost of production would take a fair slice out of the profits it still seems like a good chunk of change. I am curious as I have bred seahorses and clownfih in the past (though being inly 10 I had no idea what to do...I was successful with the horses though...)and I am going to be picking up a pair of ORA broodstock clowns within the next few days and I plan on breeding them and raising the fry. My lfs basically told me he would be able to buy around 100 a month if not more...so to me this seems like a fairly valid way of making some extra money...and being 18 a few extra hundred bucks is awesome. So after my long-winded description containing a lot of irrelevant information I have come to my ultimate question(s)...

1. How many Ocellaris can I reasonablly expect to sell to lfs's...I know it will vary but please come up with some sort of average if possible.
2. Is anyone here actually making the kind of profit that my logic has led me to?...ex. $2500+ a month?

It almost seems like it could be to good to be true...so I wanted to call on the experience of evryone her..I would appreciate any and all help/advice and please correct me if I have made any tacticul mistakes along the way...thanks in advance..

Colby

 

[StephenH]

Can you really sell 500/mo at $5? The wholesalers my fish go to do not start ordering heavily until the price gets down around $3.50 for 1 inch. They get dinged for some pretty heafty shipping costs though.

-steve

 

[David M]

why isn't "everyone doing it?"

Some people, unlike fish breeders, actually have a life It is extremely time consuming and holds you captive. You can forget vacations, holidays or weekend getaways. That is one reason I'm the type that is not shy about about sharing information, I honestly believe I could teach 100 people exactly how to breed and raise clownfish and not a single one of them would keep it up in the long run.

As for the market, I recently spoke with a sales rep at SDC and we talked a lot about captive breeding. I too am trying to judge the market and set my production goals, so I asked if they could sell 1000 ocellaris a month. He laughed and told me they sell 1000 a WEEK. That is just SDC, there are many other wholesalers in LA and more elsewhere in the country. Yea, I'd say it's wide open The $5 is more like the average you will get selling direct to retailers (although I get $7 here with no hesitation). At wholesale it's gonna be about $4 less the cost of shipping as Stephen pointed out. That is today's market, I think we can assume it will get better in the future, after all I'm sure Disney has Nemo II in the works :lol:

 

[Armando]

I'm moving to SDC soon so expect some competition! Muahhahha

j/k i'll probably be so busy i won't have time to do the reefing thing.

 

[colby]

thank you so much for the replies....good thing I do not have a life lol...I am willing to spend my time in town to raise the fish, being a student I will not be doing much in the way of travelling anyway. So after a cost analysis of raising Ocellaris it looks like it would definently be a good source of income and for me especially since I really enjoy it. Anymore advice or information from anyone would be much appreciated.

Thanx
Colby

 

[phender]

Here is but one of the down sides to your plan.
It takes 6-9 months for the babies to get big enough to sell. That means you will always have at least 2000-5000 babies at your house in various stages of development. Do you have that kind of room, and that kind of money to set up a system that can handle that?

It is pretty time consuming and it gets old pretty fast.

 

[David M]

I don't agree, ocellaris grow out much more quickly than that. The fastest ones I can sell to local stores at 14 weeks. By 18 weeks even the runts are gone. YMMV but I think it's agreed that 4-5 months should do it.

 

[count mackula]

I've seen Ocellaris at the LFS as low as $6.00, usually around $9.00-$10.00.

Selling for $5.00 doesn't seem like such a bad deal.

 

[Juck]

I've never seen good tank raised ocellaris for less than $15,, but maybe that's just the LFS' in Florida?

 

[spk]

This has been an interesting read and a discussion that I often have with an LFS in the area.

One of the things that he has suggested, is to contact other reef keepers in the area and find out how many of them are accidently breeding fish. Then band to gether to get larger numbers available on a more regular basis. So you act as a clearing house too some degree.

At the moment i am getting around 50% of the retail price for Bangaiis and I cannot breed enough of these at the moment for my LFS. One day
Thanks to eveyone for the input.
Steve

 

[Kathy55g]

50 % is very good! You have got something there!

 

[stykthyn]

I am getting 5 now, I was until recently getting 3 for ocellaris. unfortunately i did lose a huge customer when I raised my prices. It is extremely important to maintain a good realtionship with your customers if you are a small time breeder, b/c the retail store is doing you a favor by taking your fish. I have found that fragging corals is much easier and less time consuminng and that stores are more willing to buy them. I usually end up selling more coral frags than fish.

 

[David M]

the retail store is doing you a favor by taking your fish.

You have been brainwashed and that retailer is an idiot, find another store fast. You are doing him a favor by offering high quality captive bred fish at a competetive price, you even deliver them free of charge. You could get more than $3 wholesale and they would take every fish you can raise on your schedule, not theirs. Favor my arse. The local stores here beg me for fish, they take them at a smaller size than "the big commercial breeder that I won't mention the name of" partly because they look better but mostly because there is absolutely no loss whatsoever. They are in business to make money, they make more money buying my fish at $7 than buying fish that will die at any price.

Don't fall for that "favor" crap, they are making money from your hard work and effort and if you are not getting at least 1/3 of the retail selling price you should should take your fish elsewhere. $3 is a joke, an insult and a clear indication that the lfs owner is probably not doing very well because he does not understand value at all. Tough to succeed in business when you can't do simple math.

Gee, can you tell I feel strongly about this

 

[stykthyn]

kind of limited market here, I am getting 5 for my clowns now. I am not in it for the money, but I refuse to take a hit on my dealings and that what was happening at 3 per fish. My biggest customer said he could get his fish cheaper than 5 so I told him to have at it and have since lost him.

 

[mwp]

Yeah, the thing there is that this LFS (biggest customer) obviously didn't know the difference between wild caught and captive raised. I admit, it's tough when you can do a direct shipment from Bali and pick up STUNNINGLY COLORED adult Ocellaris for $2-3 landed cost...granted you can lose a lot of them too but stores don't always "see" that...they still look at the size and color and the wild fish are worth it in their eyes. Most folks know better...sorry to hear you lost him though...that always sucks.

MP