small breeding setup

SinCrisis

If you gave us your water parameters we might be able to give you better suggestions. Also, do you know your LFS's markup on fish? blue rams at my lfs sell for 6-7 dollars so they must be buying at around 2 or 3 dollars at the most.

zof

Tap is 7 after co2 escapes its up around 7.8 - 8, in my established fish tanks it drops back down to about 7.6, hence my want for a auto top off system, adds gradually and will give the water time to breath. I bought my Bolivian rams for $10 each so I'm hoping I can sell the matured fry for about $3-4 each. I need to run around and check the local stores and see what everyone is asking and what they are stocking.

SinCrisis

O.o i bought my bolivians for 5 dollars each...

zof

Eh different areas, different prices I might still be able to get them for that if the supply isn't too great around here.

Christople

yeah it all depends on availablility for price... I am going for blue rams but I have to wait next weekend because my birf day party is today and my parents say I need some money to get them soooo

SinCrisis

happy birthday christople!

Zof, you may be right, my lfs and petco and petsmart in my area all seem to use the same supplier so the supply of fish here may be cheap because of competition, but bear in mind that most fish stores buy cheap and spike their margin when supply is low. You should talk with your lfs and ask them which fish are more difficult for them to bring in, those would be the fish the lfs would be more willing to buy at higher prices. Bolivian rams, blue rams, are both already fairly common fish in the trade now. A uncle of mine lives in Australia breeding guppies for sale and they only go for around ~0.25usd per fish and the stores there sell them for around ~2.00-3.00USD. so think of the store's margin like that. the stores generally need to spike their markup because of loss, store overhead, employees, expected turnover, etc. Unless your selling a fish thats difficult for the LFS to find, its likely that a big supplier will be able to undercut you in pricing.

The advantage for you is that bigger suppliers sometimes shy away from the harder to breed fishes since they have difficulty maintaining higher quality control for those fishes when trying to breed in volume. For a setup like yours where you're personally monitoring the 4 tanks, your success will be higher and probably get more money for the fish.

Christople

yes and thanks... it's actually June 12 but my brothers graduation party is on th eleventh so two parties in a row would be a pain

badxgillen

happy B day as well...thanks for putting that so well sin...my friend breeds bangai cardinals wich are a salt water fish and he only gets about $4 dollars each and they dont buy as many as he would like ususaly like 6 - 10....i breed a number of fishes and i think the apistogramas and harder to find rainbows and tetras will fetch a higher price but still about a couple of bucks..if not under the dollar.do some homework on you area on whats hot and whats not.

zof

Ok been thinking through this and created a new image with the 50 gallon in mind, let me know what you think, on a side note I just realized a plastic container will bow to much to support baffles, so I guess I will be getting a 20 long for the sump (anyone know when petco is going to have another $1 per gallon tank sale). On the plus side most of my stuff will be here tomorrow, and I might go out and buy the rest of the pumping, also put together a basic design for a spray bar made out of pvc.

Attached Images

	breeder13.jpg (35.5 KB, 22 views)
	spraybar.jpg (17.6 KB, 22 views)

badxgillen

now it looks like you just need to go into a good local fish store and check out there setup and tweak it to what you wanna do...its getting a little deep$$$$$