Central American Vendors
- Thread starter halvyt
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Unfortunately no wild stock from Central America is being offered or imported by anyone. It has been about a decade (or a little longer) at this point that this has been the case. Sadly, no exporters exist in Central America and the trade is literally non-existent. Anything would have to be personally collected and brought into the US. It would most definitely not be even close to enough to be resold. Any fish collected are just a literal handful of small fry or juveniles to grow out for in-house breeding where hopefully the juvenile offspring can be offered at a later time. There are very, very few of us that have the ability and/or knowledge of how to plan the trips, successfully collect the targeted species, know how to get the the very few fish cleared for entry to to the US, then be able to raise them to breeding size and of course raise the offspring to a marketable size for eventual resale. The process can easily take over 1 full year for just a single species!
The demand for Central American fish in the global hobby just doesn't warrant the existence of exporters in that region of the world.
Here at TUIC for many, many years we offered wild(many only exclusively from us) and tank bred from wild stock Central Americans, as did COTA(captive bred from wild stock). Unfortunately the demand for them as been so low that we eventually stopped offering many of the 'specialty' CA cichlids with only the same 5-6 species consistently selling. My friend Dan @ COTA who literally specialized in CA cichlids with what was an outstanding stock of CA goodies ultimately also experienced the same low sales with the exception of the same 5-6 species which for him personally was not worth the time and costs to continue operating.
A blessing and curse for the hobby has been access(internet). With so many people privately breeding and either selling the hundreds of fry at next to nothing on the internet(access) or literally giving them away at swap meets. The need for professional places like myself here at TUIC, COTA, even WS to bring in many of the wild fish just does not (or in COTA case sadly did not) justify the extreme costs and years worth of time per species to do it. The blessing is with the internet, we have great access to these local private hobbyist that need to unload the successful spawns. Even I myself utilize some of them! The curse is one in the same. With the hobbyist breeders filling the need on the small demand of 'specialty' species often with a vast overstock, it no longer warrants us to supply the trade and certainly does not command the need to keep facility space available for many species. Ultimately though this will eventually, if not already, limit the species available in the trade and absolutely limits the gene pool of what will be available for year to come.
The demand for Central American fish in the global hobby just doesn't warrant the existence of exporters in that region of the world.
Here at TUIC for many, many years we offered wild(many only exclusively from us) and tank bred from wild stock Central Americans, as did COTA(captive bred from wild stock). Unfortunately the demand for them as been so low that we eventually stopped offering many of the 'specialty' CA cichlids with only the same 5-6 species consistently selling. My friend Dan @ COTA who literally specialized in CA cichlids with what was an outstanding stock of CA goodies ultimately also experienced the same low sales with the exception of the same 5-6 species which for him personally was not worth the time and costs to continue operating.
A blessing and curse for the hobby has been access(internet). With so many people privately breeding and either selling the hundreds of fry at next to nothing on the internet(access) or literally giving them away at swap meets. The need for professional places like myself here at TUIC, COTA, even WS to bring in many of the wild fish just does not (or in COTA case sadly did not) justify the extreme costs and years worth of time per species to do it. The blessing is with the internet, we have great access to these local private hobbyist that need to unload the successful spawns. Even I myself utilize some of them! The curse is one in the same. With the hobbyist breeders filling the need on the small demand of 'specialty' species often with a vast overstock, it no longer warrants us to supply the trade and certainly does not command the need to keep facility space available for many species. Ultimately though this will eventually, if not already, limit the species available in the trade and absolutely limits the gene pool of what will be available for year to come.
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COTA is /was cichlids of the Americas. He is no longer operating. As mentioned in the above post.
Got it. I did read your post but didn’t know what your acronyms stood for
Thank you Kevin for the reply. I have never really been interested in CA cichlids till recently. I knew that the demand really wasnt there but I figured that I might get lucky. If I had the connections I think that it would be fun to go and get some of the species that I want myself. It seemed like when I got my original group of fish that everyone had them. Now that the 4 of the group of 6 I originally got are big enough to start breeding I am left with what seems like all females and finding a male has been impossible. Trying to find a male I have come to find out that there seems to be a location with some of the fish sort of like how they do with killifish which of course got my attention.....fish associated with a location has to be better right....lol. Anyways I appreciate the explanation.
My LFS has smaller ones and Dave ships
