Fish retailers must provide a constant supply of fish to their customers. Some stores buy their fish directly from fish farms but this can be time consuming and sometimes impractical.
To the retailer, purchasing tropical fish entails the reviewing of price lists and catalogues, ordering the fish and then picking up the shipment. Wholesalers can save fish retailers time and money by handling the acquisition of fish.
Where Wholesalers Buy Fish
Most wholesalers buy their stock from commercial fish farms within their country and from local breeders. A shorter shipment time is less stressful for the fish. As a rule, shipping times that are longer than 36 hours are very harmful to fish.
Wholesalers also shop around for the best buy. Because they are purchasing larger quantities to serve their client base, they will usually pay less due to a volume discount.
Local breeders will sell their fish to wholesalers because stores may not have room for young fish or may not have the need for the species of fish offered by the breeder. Fish that are bred locally are usually very healthy because they are accustomed to local water conditions and are not stressed from being shipped long distances.
Many wholesalers will not buy fish that were caught by artificial means, such as poisons used by some fish collectors to stun the fish into an easy capture. There is reason to believe that there are long-term side effects of catching fish this way. Artificial capture of fish is lessening and people are now leaning towards using other ways of catching fish where poisons are not involved.
How Wholesalers Process Requisitions for Fish
Wholesalers will either pick up the fish shipment at the airport or arrange to have the fish delivered to their aquarium facility. The fish are then acclimatized in their tanks and held in quarantine for at least seven days to ensure the fish are free from disease. The weak fish are placed in different tanks in order to stop the spread of disease.
After the quarantine period is finished, the fish are sold to retailers. Some retailers quarantine the fish for a week to ensure the fish are stabilized in their own tanks. Other retailers do not quarantine the fish but will offer a 72-hour guarantee to their customers. It is usual practice to ask customers to bring in a water sample from their aquarium if any of the newly-purchased fish get sick. The store can run tests to determine if there was a problem with the water quality.
Wholesalers play an important role in the acquisition, culling and storage of fish in order to help retailers concentrate on selling quality fish to customers.
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