The price of fish..

In article ,
(bassett) wrote:

We in Australia don,t get much of a chance to buy large tropical fish,
and
the other day I visited my local Aquarium , and he had a couple of large
Placo catfish , in stock . These would have been around 6 to 8 inches
long.
We never see fish of that size, especially in the country areas, The
main
Cities, Sydney, Melbourne etc might get them, but there rare.
Anyway, they where priced at $300 aust each, which by current
exchange
rates works out at as follows ,

300.00 AUD
Australia Dollars = 217.875 USD
United States Dollars


Would you consider this good value or over priced.

Regards from OZ bassett

From a UK POV

Assuming by Placo Catfish you mean a common Plec (Hypostomus) or a sail
fin (Gibbiceps) then what happens in the UK is that the dealers sell
hundreds of tiny ones to people with small tanks. Before long the Plec
outgrows the tank. The owner then takes it back to their LFS, who take it
off their hands and sell them for about 10GBP (= 25AUD), they generally
hang around for ever as the market is saturated with them. If you mean
more exotic varieties then I have seen big Panaques go for about 5or6
times that

Roger Sleet
Roger's Aquatic Pages http://www.sleet.plus.com