Where do you folks obtain all these rare fish?

[joe schmoe]

I used to do the rounds to all of the area pet stores every weekend to keep my eye out for rare fish...and the number of fish I see here that I've never seen before amazes me. Things like Killifish, dwarf SA cichlids, Loaches. I don't do the rounds anymore, but where do you folks go?? Online?? Conventions?? Shows??

[somefinnfishy]

From me whats it your looking for;)

[1 fish 2 fish]

I'm surprised you haven;t seen dwarf SA ciclids, you probably have you jsut didn;t know it many fish go by many different names, so you may have seen rare fishl, just didn't know it.

[Frameshift]

Different parts of the states/canada/UK can get different fish for different prices from different sources/suppliers. Hence, some fish you might deem rare are actually common in most other places, and fish you see every day could be considered rare in other parts of the world.

Aquariacentral is a compilation of hobbyists around the world...of course people are going to have fish you've never heard of. That's what makes it such a great hobby!












-> Try www.tangledupincichlids.com for many rare/unusual CA/SA cichlids!

[pinballqueen]

I keep fairly common fish now, but most of my fish that were of the strange and unusual varieties came from my lfs, where he would receive unusual tradeins, and immediately call me (cuz he knows I'm a sucker for oddballs and tankbusters...).

I've had everything from freshwater barracuda to african featherfin eels and they all came from there. He even has a moray eel in a 300 gallon tank in the corner (carefully labeled "not for sale", "I will take your finger off if you try to pet me", and "Take this weight off the top of my tank so I can bite your kneecaps off on my trip to the floor!"... he's a mean booger.)

[Cearbhaill]

Aquabid (http://www.aquabid.com) has listings of some really unusual and gorgeous fish. I just had three stunning fish shipped to me in South Florida from New Jersey and all went really well. They came via Airborne Express right to my front door and seem to have suffered very little. The shipping $$ is a bear but if you want what no one else has you've gotta pay.

[Skippy]

I have gotten some really interesting fish from wathcing www.aquabid.com in the "other" section. That's also a good place to look for various fish as it has most of them catagorized down.

[Nippy]

The fish I have that I consider rare, I got by accident. I saw this fish labeled as a keyhole cichlid and bought it because he was the last one left and he'd been all by himself for 4 months. I felt sorry for him. Turned out to be a dwarf cichlid, Nanacara taeni. A few months later, another one turned up in a shipment of Texas Cichlids! I couldn't believe my luck and snatched him up immediately. And then, it turned out that I actually had a pair and they actually went through the motions of breeding (but no eggs or little ones that I saw).

[Dapple2]

I get my killis from club auctions since I can never find them in stores. The nice thing about killis though is that you can actually mail the eggs from many of the in a film cannister with a little peat. I've also found aquabid to be a good site for unusual stuff.