question for y'all

[David M]

Colby- where in California? I am in San Diego (easy access to LA) and I too harbor the fantasy that I could hang up my tool belt and make a reasonable living breeding fish. You will get $3.50-$4 apiece for ocellaris and most basic clowns in LA, I wouldn't know about the others.

A lot depends on what you need to "make a living", if your'e married with children and your wife doesn't work I'd say it's not likely If you consider $30K a year an acceptable income then sure, you can do it easily. If you need $100K + I'd say give up before you begin. For me it's somewhere in the middle and I'm planning to try I am a self employed liscensed electrician so working is not necessarily set at 40 hrs per week. I can dial back the hours as breeding becomes (hopefully) a bigger % of my income and time commitment. If your "day job" is all or nothing I think it would be harder to make the transition unless you have a good reserve built up.

I totally agree that diversifying species and selling as much as you can direct to retailers is a better approach than trying to mass produce a single species for wholesale. What fun would that be anyway, after all the idea is to make a living doing something you enjoy, right? My plan is to set a realistic ocellaris production goal for wholesale, enough to cover the "nut", and then look to other species for diversification and direct sales to stores. In my case I want to produce 1000 oc's a month with the capacity to double that if needed. These are live animals here, they can die, get sick or simply stop spawning for no aparant reason (belive me, I know this). If I can make the 1000 with two pair I want at least 6 more as back ups. Doesn't mean I want to rear more than 1000/ month but I want the "insurance". After that I want to grow out maybe one nest each month of tomatos and gsms since I have them anyway, that coud easily be another 500 fish. I'm also hoping for 50-60/ month bangaii's which I just started working with again. I also have orchid and arabian dottybacks which I have not succeeded with but I'll get there some day. I have blue assessors I haven't even tried yet and blue streak cardinals that spawn all the time, I just don't have time for them because I'm still working the day job. So the plan is make the nut through wholesale and then diversify as much as possible, using experience to balance out the production of other species based on direct sales to lfss. A sales guy at SDC told me how many lfs ther are in the greater LA area, I forget the number now but it blew me away. It was well over 1000.

 

[colby]

hello,
sorry it took me soo long to reply..thank you for all of the information and input. I think that my goal will be to raise a few hundred of several different species each month and try to sell primarily to lfs...considerin the limited market for seahorses I am also considering selling via the internet as well in order to gain as many customres as possible.. what has been your experience with the number of seahorses you have been able to sell? Thnx.
Colby

 

[David M]

I was never able to make seahorses "profitable" but I know some who have, it can be done. The problem for me is an ethical one, sure you can crank them out and wholesale them off for $10 ea at 2-3" but IME that is waaaay too young, and the vast majority are going to be purchased by people with no knowledgse of their special needs. They are gonna get tossed into reef tanks in many cases, or even worse f/o systems where they get starved out by aggressive eaters. It's a specialty market and if you care about the animals at all you want them at 4-6 months before selling and you want the consumer "qualified". Then there is the fact that the consumer you do want is going to want pairs and in most cases you can't guarantee that at 3 months old. I am sick of seeing all the puny "farm raised" horses that get sold at wholesale and retail, it really irks me, most are doomed from the start. So no more horses for me. When I did raise them I sold only direct to known seahorse.org people at 7-8 months and got $75 each, it's a small market but the only way I would do it. JMO

 

[colby]

David... I totally agree with you...I would not feel comfortable selling the horses to anyone I didnt know...also I would not sell them till they are atleast 5 or 6 inches..so I may recosider raising the ponies...another question for u guys..just got another pair of breeding Ocellaris...any idea how long in your experience it may take em to breed again after move?

 

[mwp]

I don't know about that Colby...you ARE trying to make a profit too, right? What you need to do is educate the LFS's.

My whole seahorse experience started with seeing a young trio of black Erectus at a LFS...I'd noticed them before but never really gave them another thought until RENEE noticed them. Only then did we inquire further...turns out they were well trained to eat frozen mysis - they chased it down with gusto. What I saw there literally turned all my preconceived notions about seahorses upside down...I had to try it. After researching, most folks felt erectus was too large for the 24 gallon cube, thus I've ended up with barbouri. I lost one along the way that never did well, but the other 2 males and the female now eat with gusto from a Tubrinaria (cup coral feeding station).

Basically, partner up with your LFS, educate them, and THEY will in turn educate their customers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with putting seahorses in a reef (mine share a full blown reef with our mating mandarins)...just have to pick the right companions (corals and fish) and give them a feeding station setup...no reason someone can't be successful. I'm not going to have any qualms selling my future broods (if I'm lucky enough to raise them for a change) because I know the standards of the folks at the LFS's I'd sell them to in the first place.

Selling them over the internet...sure, you totally eliminate that "experienced" middle man to help you sell your ponies and most likely the job of screening individual people who find you via the internet could be too much to tackle.

Personally, I wouldn't rule out seahorses...at least here in Chicago we RARELY see them...they're usually not even on wholesaler's lists. May not be the same situation in California, but I don't think I'll have any problems selling my seahorses here (again, if and when I ever manage to get some breeding and raise them up!)

FWIW,

MP