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Insight into 'middle men' ala fish wholesalers.

Vhuang168

Vhuang168

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Since there is talk of how fish are poorly handled at these 'middle men' (and the thread got locked before I could reply), I'll give an insight into some of the wholesalers in the LA region that most stores buy from. I travel down to LA about twice every quarter. I get to visit with these wholesalers and have gotten to know their staff and talk about their methods often.

When fish arrive they get acclimated to their system, not just tossed into tanks for sale.

For example, at 1 of the wholesalers, they use ph buffer to raise or lower the water the fish are in to the same ph level as their system. This is done with a drip controlled by pH sensors and solenoids. After that, they are temp acclimated and water acclimated before releasing into their QT system. They stay in QT for a period of time under observation before being released into tanks for sale. Some will medicate their holding system, some don't. Both places I go frequently have marine biologists and husbandry experts on staff.

When there was severe weather in the mid-west a few months ago, 1 wholesaler recalled every single box from the airport because they were not sure if the shipment would arrive on time. There was a possibility they would be held at a freight warehouse for a while. So the fish got packed, trucked to the airport, then they recalled the shipment and trucked the boxes BACK to their facility, all went through acclimation again before being released back into holding system. That is time and effort which raised their cost per fish but the welfare of the fish are what was most important for them, not the bottom dollar.

Methods are not always the same but there are more similarities than differences and all fish are handled with care and their well-being is at the forefront. But there are some wholesalers that are not so concerned with all that. The faster fish leave their facility, the lower their losses, the more money they make. Ultimately, it IS a business. All this effort into making sure the fish are handled well comes at a cost. So if you see a store selling fish cheaper than everywhere else, you have to ask why are they able to do that. Cutting down the middle man is 1 way, but does that guarantee you the best quality fish? Or the cheapest fish?

There are always 2 sides to every story. Try and get both before you pass judgement.
 
Thanks for the info and clarification, Vincent. My overly broad brushstrokes in the other thread re: care of the fish was perhaps more influenced by wanting to make the point that the vast majority of collected fish die even before they get into our tanks. I definitely did not mean to target the wholesale middlemen who are excellent businessmen in general and realize that their margins are dependent on good care of the animals so they do survive the next stages.

I am curious if you've ever been at one of the LA wholesalers when shipments arrived , and about what the DOA rate was? Also, have you ever known them to ship equipment with reagents intact? (inside joke)
 
Bruce Spiegelman said:
I am curious if you've ever been at one of the LA wholesalers when shipments arrived , and about what the DOA rate was? Also, have you ever known them to ship equipment with reagents intact? (inside joke)
Click to expand...
I have not, they usually don't want visitors at that time because it is organized chaos and I would just be in the way. But I helped put together quite a few Apex units that sit at the acclimation stations that help with the acclimation process.

As for the reagents, only certain individuals I know do that. A very select few. "P
 
One thing to note, its not always best practice to buffer the pH up and to drip acclimate when receiving a fish that has been shipped. Ammonia can build up in the bag and is less harmful at a low pH to the fish than at a high pH. If ammonia has built up and you try to drip acclimate you could end up hurting the fish more than helping.
 
iani said:
One thing to note, its not always best practice to buffer the pH up and to drip acclimate when receiving a fish that has been shipped. Ammonia can build up in the bag and is less harmful at a low pH to the fish than at a high pH. If ammonia has built up and you try to drip acclimate you could end up hurting the fish more than helping.
Click to expand...
a few drops of prime takes care of this problem right?
 
My intention when I drip acclimate is to get the temp/salinity/ph of the water the fish are in to match more closely to the tank I am putting the fish into. I do float my bags to match the temp. But I don't match salinity or pH before dripping.
 
We had a good discussion the other day on this (within the Hawaii ban context)
Honstly thos hobby need to reform. Mortalities are just way too high to the point that the industry defense of "we know what we doing, let us regulate ourselves" is not cutting it..
I will give an anecdotal here: I ordered a special fish from an experienced shop that was and is doing all what @Vhuang168 was saying.
The shipment contained 6 of the same fish i ordered, within less than 3 weeks only 2 left...and this is not wholesales setting where much higher volume of fish get tossed in small areas, I am 100% sure the wholesalers would not have fracture of the time that my source had for these 6 fishes..
Read through the thread, couple of wholesalers were commenting on the dark secrets this hobby has and hiding when it come to fishing and shipping practices..

The industry is in trouble, unless it reform we will lose the hobby.

humble.fish

Background information on the current restrictions on collection for the ornamental trade Hawaii.

I too think it’s ideological and even the future of captive breeding won’t necessarily save a portion of this hobby. We can’t even have captive bred/tank raised Asian Arowanas in the US because of how legislation has been written regarding endangered species. It’s unrelated but I think it’s a...
humble.fish humble.fish
 
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So a friend on BAR took me through a couple of local bay area wholesalers.
There were more fish per tank. Some scary electrical wiring. Not very clean and presentable.
But really, nothing horrible. About what I would expect from a place not selling to the public.
That said ... nothing great either.

One problem : The chain is simply long.
1) Divers who catch fish on the reef.
2) Wholesale - shippers. (foreign country)
3) International shipping.
4) Wholesale - receivers. (Our end)
5) Local fish stores

That long chain is simply terrible for the fish, even if all the links are good.
And if any one link is bad, fish is toast.

---

What I would like to see: High tariffs as fish enter the country.
1) It levels the cost with captive bred.
2) Since you pay more per fish, it incentivizes keeping them alive.
3) Extra price keeps amateurs away from difficult fish until they are really sure.
 
rygh said:
So a friend on BAR took me through a couple of local bay area wholesalers.
There were more fish per tank. Some scary electrical wiring. Not very clean and presentable.
But really, nothing horrible. About what I would expect from a place not selling to the public.
That said ... nothing great either.

One problem : The chain is simply long.
1) Divers who catch fish on the reef.
2) Wholesale - shippers. (foreign country)
3) International shipping.
4) Wholesale - receivers. (Our end)
5) Local fish stores

That long chain is simply terrible for the fish, even if all the links are good.
And if any one link is bad, fish is toast.

---

What I would like to see: High tariffs as fish enter the country.
1) It levels the cost with captive bred.
2) Since you pay more per fish, it incentivizes keeping them alive.
3) Extra price keeps amateurs away from difficult fish until they are really sure.
Click to expand...
There's no Bay Area wholesaler worth a damn anymore. Most are scary if you are in the compliance field ;)

I'd like to see much great pay to the collectors and no tariffs. When a diver gets .13 for a fish that sells for $80, there's an issue to be addressed. Higher prices do not equate to greater care. There's a VERY successful Service guy in the bay area that simply views his tanks in the cut flower mentality. He charges an arm and a leg, and his customers don't mind.

Depending on country, a vast majority go through this model (PI,Indo, Bali)

1) Divers who catch fish on the reef.
2) middle man - often quite a journey to exporter
2) Exporters
A) possibly traded with another exporter - thus another journey
3) International shipping.
4) Wholesale
A) possibly traded with another wholesaler - thus another journey
5) Local fish stores

Some countries and wholesalers have shortened the CoC
Baja we had
1) Village collectors & exports
2) International flight
3) Wholesale
a) sold to other wholesalers worldwide
4) LFS

SI has the same CoC for the most part to one Wholesaler as they own the only station. They also own a Fiji operation.


.
 
I think part of the problem is also how people view fish versus other pet animals.

Could you imagine walking into petsmart and there just being a random dead cat in their cat cage?

You walk into a fish store and it is fairly common to see dead and/or dying fish in a tank.

I had a bit of a realization myself the other day around how much I view fish as commodities rather than an actual pet like I would my dogs. I was at AC and they had a TON of gem tangs. I was thinking to myself, "Geeze, do that many people really fork out $350 for a fish??". Then I took a step back and thought about dogs -- you can easily spend thousands on a puppy if you want a pure bred dog. But with fish, I've always thought it was crazy that people would spend $100+ on a fish.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't want to see my fish die. And when I get a sick fish I feel bad, and/or try to do what I can to help. But its super distant to how I feel about my dogs.

So the realization was a bit of a shift around thinking about fish in general -- that if you view a fish purchase as a pet you expect to have for 10-20 years, its very different than if you view a fish as a decoration for your decorative tank that you can always replace if something goes sideways.
 
I'm sure if dogs or cats were sold in this country as food, and done so very widely then dogs would be closer to fish on the whole "dead in a cage scale" . So in our minds it really boils down to well they're killing millions of fish, and packing them on ice for sale as food (maybe not the tiny fish... those maybe bait fish? :D) so if a fish dies it's really "no big deal because so many more are being killed for food.
 
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