Re: NANFA-L-- RFI NA Aquarium Fish

Mysteryman (bestfish-in-alaweb.com)
Sat, 20 May 2006 08:23:15 -0700

Moontanman-in-aol.com wrote:

>
>"...would rather go collecting than pet shopping. Especially nowadays when pet shops
>have become a maze of just a few species. If you do find a pet shop with a
>good collection of fish let me know. nowadays you are lucky to find much more
>than a couple dozen species in any one pet shop these days. I know that the
>variety of aquarium sized and beautiful fish is what attracted me to native
>fish in the first place.
>
>Michael
>/--
>
>
>
Ah, the "Petsmart Effect" is taking hold, just as I predicted it would.
When Petsmart & Petco, move into an area, they pretty much wipe out the
small shops. Unfortunately, these two bigbox stores only carry a paltry
number of common bread & butter species. That means the
wholesalers/fishfarms not only lose a customer for their more varied
wares, but wind up having to expend more production resources on those
bread & butter species to feed the increased need of the bigbox stores.
That means that these farms are producing fewer & fewer species in
favor of greater numbers of fewer species.
The net result is easy to predict, and if left unchecked, the downward
spiral can only continue. Eventually only common species will be
available in any significant amount, and the entire industry will
suffer. The hobby itself will suffer, too, as the seasoned veteran
hobbyists get bored & jaded & the new recruits suffer an abyssmal
failure rate due to the lack of any useful guidance, forced to rely on
those bozos-in-petsmart as they would be. The hobby isn't quite as good
as doomed, but it can be expected to suffer massive setbacks in the
forseeable future. Bear in mind that equipment manufacturers will also
be going out of business in droves when their own sales falter to
all-time lows, resulting in yet more obstacles for those who would try
to be successful in the hobby.

Petsmart & Petco will of course also ultimately become victims of their
own success. I wonder if the hobby can rebuild itself again once they
are gone?

The obvious solution to the problem is to fight fire with fire, and
start a new bigbox chain of aquarium superstores, each with some 600
tanks per store and over 1000 species on hand-in-all times as a matter
of company policy. Yeah, baby!
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