Importing guppies

[PENEJANE]

I would like to know the low down on importing guppies. I have seen many sites that show guppies for sale but how would I get them to NZ? I am not looking at a huge bulk look but just some for myself.

Any information on this would be greatful.

Cheers

[minchton]

I am no expert on the subject but from watching the various topics on importing my best advice is forget it before you start :lol:

Overseas suppliers will only deal in big numbers (1000's).

You would need MAF approval which would entail Quarantine facilities etc etc.

Honestly NZKA have looked at it and found it almost unrealistic, private individuals have found the same thing.

Unless you wish to start your own Quarantine facility one of the biggest drawbacks has been found to be the cost of hiring tanks in licenced facilities. Even if you got around this the cost of the Guppys would skyrocket to the extent that they become tropical gold.

Hope this helps, I hate being a wet blanket but best you know the facts

[PENEJANE]

Thanks for that

I guessed it was a far fetched idea or many would of done it by now. I would really like to get my hand on some albino guppies and more snakeskins but the LFS we have won't get certian guppies for us. Its more of a Pot Luck Bag of fish lol

but thanks for the heads up.

:bounce:

[Werner]

PJ

I just got some nice ones from a petshop in CHCH. They are from Singapore and look really nice. So no need to try to do it yourself

[PENEJANE]

One big problem there though Werner. There is no way of me getting to chch and back lol and if I knew you were going I would of gotten a cheap tank off trademe for you to pick up (if you could).

How did you get them? Did you go up or did you get someone to post them down? I would love to get some more nice males and females. Our LFS isn't importing no more at the moment and relying on others to bring in theirs so the quality isn't very nice at the moment.

cheers

[Werner]

Hi Pj

I got someone to bring them back. They would have courierd them down next week but I could'nt wait

A bit expensive but worth it if you want to improve bloodlines.

I got 4 different males and some really nice females. Cost a bit but as you said, nothing in the lfs that I want at the moment.

Do you still have that nice male of yours?

[PENEJANE]

if your talking about my solid black male with the huge tail then yes I still have him. Hes my pride and joy and right after him is my green snakeskin. I would love to have 2 more tanks set up then I could seperate the black male with some females to improve on and the other for my snakeskin.

I have found that if my dark females mate with a male that is red or orange most of the bubbas will end up with red or orange colours which sucks. I am down to only 1 orange and 1 red at the moment so I hope that with all my females that I get some better colours come through

I will have a whole pile of young guppies for trade/sale (or take into east rd pets) in about a month or so. Already showing colours but will wait till they are a little bigger.

If you have some nice ones Werner I would love to look into getting some bubbas off you at some stage, depending on the colouration of course

Cheers

[Werner]

It will be no problem in a little while to get babies PJ.

Did you see that nice Moscow Blue on TM?

The ones I got now are a yellow leopard tail male with 2 females (linebred ones so that's good), a green diamond male which is really nice and a lot more expensive than the others, a red multi colour male - which actuallly looks a bit more orange to me, and a blue king cobra male which is very nice, and then 2 females that they called super females - really big and beautiful shimmering blue colours. now to get onto breeding...

[PENEJANE]

Yeah I have seen the ones on trademe but there is also another little line that says they will not ship to the southisland which totaly sucks as that counts me out on some very lovely guppies. I have seen the blue ones as well as the cobras which I was interested in untill I saw that they won't ship down here.

So yeah in a few months time when you get some bubbas let me know Maybe I may have some more black males that I could do a trade with or something

cheers

[alanmin4304]

I was licenced to import goldfish before they banned it and your premises needs to reach a pretty high standard (which has got tougher since) and has to be gazetted. Also if you are new chances are MAF will not make life easy for you. After six weeks of quarantine and seven visits in six weeks, all by different pairs of inspectors I gave all the fish to MAF in a frozen lump. Each visit cost me nearly as much as the fish did in Singapore. My suggestion would be to try and get an importer with contacts already to bring some in for you with another shipment of their own fish, this would give the best discount on freight. I don't think you can rent space as the owner would want to be in control of their premise (you do something wrong they get their licence pulled) As a rough guide the importer would expect to make 100% on fish, freight, fees, overheads and deaths. You would probably have to be prepared to pay even if the whole lot died in quarantine.