The Commercial Aquarium Fish Supply Chain
By Kevin Thurston
From July 2002 CAS Newsletter and Aquarist, Colorado Aquarium Society
Aquarticles
Have you ever wondered where your local fish store gets its fish? Have you ever
wondered why certain fish are always plentiful while other fish that used to be readily
available are now scarce? I hope to answer these questions in this article based on my
experiences and conversations with others in the business.
In the early days of the hobby, there were various methods for shops to obtain their
fish, but by the late '60s, the local wholesaler had gotten a foothold and was on the
rise. This local wholesaler dealt with fish farms and overseas suppliers. It was important
for them to offer a variety of species in order to keep their customer orders large. At
this time many stores would order 12 each of several different kinds of "bread and
butter" fish and one or two of anything that was more unusual. This meant that even
small stores could offer a large selection of fish.
In the '70s, a new type of company began to emerge called transshippers. These
companies would deal with foreign suppliers. They would import from several (mostly Asian)
countries, repack the bags according to what each customer wanted and send it to their
customers, which were the local wholesalers. In the early days of the transshippers they
didn't do anything to the bags of fish. This meant that fish were arriving in very poor
water and losses could be high. It also meant that the fish were packed in such a way as
to optimize quantities of each fish for shipping purposes. The appeal transshipping was
that this made things easier for the wholesaler since they no longer had to deal with
several countries. They still dealt in quantities (per fish), but they didn't have to keep
the quantities up for any particular country, since the transshipper would take care of
that.
Going into the '80s, the transshippers got much better at developing water change and
re-packing techniques. As they became more reliable, they became more appealing to
retailers and as competition in the transshipping business increased, more transshippers
were willing to sell to retailers. When retailers purchased from transshippers, they found
that they could get fish for a fraction of the price that they had been paying.
Unfortunately this also included more overhead in dealing with trips to the airport, more
tank space required etc. Where the retailer used to order a dozen red swordtails every
week, now they were bringing in red swordtails 250 at a time. This was accompanied by an
increase in the dollars they had invested in red swordtails that could not be put into
things such as elephant noses or marigold swords for that matter. When I was in the
wholesale business at that time, I wanted to bring in Botia sidthimunki,
sometimes known as the dwarf Botia or dwarf loach. The problem was that at the pack
quantity and the price, it would have cost over $300.00 just to bring them in. My
clientele couldn't support that, much less any retailer's clientele. I haven't seen any on
the market since the '70s. Meanwhile Florida fish farmers were branching out into
supplying retailers and supplementing what they could farm with imported fish that they
had transshipped. As more retailers began to get their fish at the lower prices that these
suppliers offered, this forced even more retailers to seek these suppliers in order to
remain price competitive.
These trends have continued through the '90s to the present. There are a few local
wholesalers left, but they have managed to stay in business through exclusive contracts
with chains such as Walmart, Pet City and Pet Ranch. Independent fish retailers of any
size tend to ship in their stock through a transshipper. Smaller operations tend to favor
the Florida suppliers who can offer Florida raised fish at excellent prices and imported
fish at competitive (against local suppliers') prices. What this means is that whenever a
retailer wants to buy some red swordtails, he is usually at the mercy of his supplier to
tell him how many he is going to get. When I look at store displays these days; it's so
much different than it was back in the '70s. Back then the tanks were smaller, but they
had more different kinds of fish in them. In those days, Bala sharks were wild caught and
they weren't caught at small sizes. They were also expensive, so stores didn't stock very
many of them. Since the Thais have learned to spawn them and with the rise of
transshipping, now days almost every store has a tank with a large number Bala sharks.
They may even have several tanks stocked full of Bala sharks with different sizes in each
tank. This is great if you like Bala sharks, however I defy you to find any Botia
sidthimunki in the stores these days even though there were plenty of them around
back in the '70s. There are a lot of other fish that fall into the same category. It's
just too expensive to bring in a bag of fish that aren't going to move fast enough to
justify the quantity that will be in that bag. The unfortunate paradox here is that as
collecting and breeding methods have improved, the selection of fish available today far
outstrips what was available 30 years ago, while most retailers can not afford the money
invested to stock that selection.
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