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Are there any catfish enthusiast's left?


KrazyGeoff

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How are some of your stripy little ones going Geoff??

Swimmingly well, thanks David, albeit a tad frustrating.

P44, you are a bit quiet these days?

I often wonder on the viability of catfish in the NZ hobby, specifically the fancy plec’s.

Is it the price?

Is it some kind of natural cycle?

Is it the post recession thing?

What do you folks think.

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I think things like this are always cyclical, but there will always be dedicated enthusiasts who will follow regardless. The lack of new species coming in probably plays a part in the downturn in interest, as possibly does the 'secret squirrel' attitude of many keepers, it's hard to get a scene or buzz going about something when no one wants to talk about what they're keeping. African cichlids were the big thing for quite a while, now it seems like planted tanks and nano tanks (and planted nano tanks) are the current flavour of the month. Maybe predators will be back in vogue next, then it will be the turn of fancy plecs again...

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Well with only 70 tanks going atm

its just a matter of so few tanks so little money and so many fish

how are the biger strippy ones going ?

hmmm

I need to update my posts after seeing Davids

but atm have

L066,

royal whips

red whips

gba

red eye gba

calicos

and a very nice ancistrus pair that came in a temenaki spotted and have lovely tiny red gold spots

so nothing really special

of course some one once said I am an accountant who is a fly fisherman who collects plecs...of course I have patience.....so just waiting and watching

navarre

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how are the biger strippy ones going ?

Hi Nav,

Good to hear you are still going strong, although 70 tanks is almost showing off :bggrn:

The big strippy ones are still a challenge. I think the male has a better income than me, as he seems to be on a perpetual date, with the alpha female. Perhaps he needs to shell out for some quality bubbles or something???

Cheers

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My peckoltia brevis spawned but my clown loach colony proved an effective contraception.

Peckoltiva vittata came in awhile back and I thought "wow awesome something new" but they were meh.

There just isn't anything interesting anymore (in my opinion) and I know the suppliers don't want to bring in my plecs as they don't really sell.

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Absolutly 100% agree. before I joined this forum there was a heap of plecos that I wanted but I never saw them in the lfs so I never got any, but now that I am on here nearly all of my dreams have come true

OK, the price thing is of interest to me.

What sort of price is fair?

Lets say each of the breeding stock costs $200, and you can't sex them so you need to get a few, say 5 (for a round number).

You keep them for 2 or 3 years to grow them to adults, and then you at least know if you have a pair.

Then you gotta try and breed them, and lets say that takes another 6 months.

You need another tank to seperate the extra males too though.

So now they bred, and say you get 20 babies, and you loose say 40%

Now you need to keep them for about 6 months before they can be sold.

So what is a fair price?

(one answer is "whatever someone will pay for them", but thats not the kind of answer I am enquiring about)

Cheers

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I think that all depends on the fish, I am very opposed too paying $240 for a L142 or $180 for a L081/L018 when they are around 30-40mm, they are nice fish but that seems ridiculs especialy when HFF advertised a L081/L018 for $100 last week. So including shipping it would be cheaper to get a pleco sent down this way instead of driving into town and buying one. I love the fact that finaly we are getting some fancy plecos in town, but I think because they know there is only 4 shops and 3 others dont/wont stock them they have marcket monopoly and will charge what they like.

As for plecs to breed If I buy a group for around the $200ish mark and I do get them to breed to start with I would be looking at swaping the off spring with others that have plecos that I dont currently own, then depending on the fish around the $30-40mark is fair. If breeding for a bussiness then charging more to cover cost's is fine, but if your only breeding for a hobbie, then just making some extra coin to buy more fish works for me.

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