Electric Head

It costs ALOT more than $105 per year to have an import licence. Then on top of that you have MAF audits on your setup, not to forget the $$$ MAF charges for each visit while the fish are in quarantine and the MAF/customs/gst charges just to get the fish in NZ. And then running a quarantine facility isn't cheap, there is a lot of work that goes into keeping fish healthy for 6weeks (freshwater) not to mention the stressed state they arrive in. One bad shipment can really pump up the costs of importing. I know the price Aros go for overseas/landed in NZ, if you can find some for $1NZ there would be a fair bit of demand for the name of the exporter that can sell them at that price! There is only 1 importer bringing in aros regularly because there is not the demand. And only so many of the expensive varieties will sell therefore less are imported which puts their price up further. If a retail store had say, red aros and lost 1 then they would have to sell a few more before they could recover the cost of the lost fish and make a profit. If importing fish was that cheap and easy to do a lot more people would be doing it. You would need an importer to sell freshwater livestock direct to the public to get pricing well below retail, then to make it worth while and to move enough stock they would need to open a retail front anyway...

Will let you know how this guys does in a max:D