sometimes i cant find certain fish at my lfs and i hate the shipping charges online. does anybody know of an affordable sight. i think its hilarious cause if somebody wanted like one neon tetra it would be like 2 buks for the fish but the shipping is like 25 what a waste cheapes tive found is twenty dollar shipping and its not worth it but everybody on lots of these forums seems to like buying fish online cause its cheaper?????

i know about aquabid and ebay still costs around 20 to ship on average unless ur buying a 100 hundred dollar fish where the shipping is included in the overall price lol

ok message boards as in like aquariumforum classifieds and many others like that

Your best bet for a less common fish, and a very healthy one at that, is your local fish club. One of the things that happens to those $20 shipping fish is the true hobbyists, not the tank decorators, end up breeding what they get hold of and will sell their surplus at club meetings or club auctions. Any more, the club that I belong to and some neighboring clubs have become my main source for livestock. I have also bought fish on line but only when I wanted enough to make the cost of shipping worthwhile. If you buy 20 fish, the shipping only comes to $1 each which is not the same level of cost at all.
The LFS is fine for fish food or hardware but they seldom can even tempt me with their fish. If I want a particular fish and must have exactly that fish, the on line sources work. If I want a particular type of fish but am not seriously looking for a particular one, the auctions work out very well. I walk into an auction with an idea of what I want, right now that is some montezuma swords, but I will look at an offering of Nezzy swords if there are no Montys. I am the same way with goodeids. If I am looking for a Characodon, I will consider whichever ones they have and not just the particular species I would prefer.

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Fishless cycling

One thing to keep in mind for the high shipping costs ($20+) is that this is usually 95% of the time for express/next day delivery. That is to guarantee the fishy will arrive to your doorstep alive. Otherwise, priority mail would be 2-3 days and putting a fishy in a bag through the mail system for that long would not be a very good idea.

BOTH ebay and aquabid make their fish suppliers or the ones who are reputable ship by the fastest method available or they are technically not allowed to sell on their site. If you find people who are selling with FREE shipping RUN QUICK and report them to the site as the fish are not going to be arriving in live condition this time of year if at all.

The really good online dealers and breeders can be found by asking those who have used them in the past generally on a forum that is a good one such as this one. I am betting that there a lot of members here who have dealt with online dealers and breeders and can give references. Do not trust anyone that has not got references.

Rose

Start a local club! We can help with that here

and why do people on here oppose buying lfs fish there are some pretty nice ones around here such as house of tropicals and tropical fish world as long as u look at the fish to see for damamge, disease, behaviour or other bad signals they shuld b fine i turned a crappy 3 dollar jack dempsey from petco into a beautiful monster and hes prob worth around 15 now

I definately don't oppose buying from any of the LFSs here. If they just would get a better selection of fishies.

Like Kuhli's...believe it or not...actually hard to find here. Got a 20long just waitin on them to show up again.

wow we have amazing selection and healthy selection at places near me and decent prices

its becuase we have little specialty stores there only ways to beat out petco and petsmart are to have better selection in rare items not necessarily rare but not ur average skull or broken ship decor for the aquarium or stupid guppies and stuff more cool stuff like rays and arowana

I envy you iz513. My LFS carry things like rasboras, common aquarium swordtails and guppies, a few platies some angels and so on. Most of them don't even have an employee who could identify a butterfly goodeid, one of the most common goodeid there is. They have never seen Heterandria formosa or Limia vitatta. Even the swordtails do not include wild type X helleri but they would probably recognize them as swordtails, they just would consider them poor quality for the lack of fancy features. These are all very common livebearers in the hobby but not in the LFS.

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Fishless cycling

I'm in Va. Round these parts it's pretty much Wally World, PetSmart and Petco. We have one small pet store but they don't do a very good job with keeping it up. Sad when a chain store does a better job than a specialty store.