Importing from overseas..

[flukes]

I was wondering if you need a license to order discus from overseas and also what are the quarintene laws when importing discus?? I see many of the farms in singapore and thai land but i was wondering if they would still ship to a non-retail keeper. The quanity would still be high but i was wondering what would be needed to do such a thing? cheers
Scott

[DiscusMan]

There is a member of the ADA that has a quarantine room. I have heard that some of our memebrs are also getting import licences.

I will be interested to see what the answer to this is.

Maybe you need to be a licenced importer in order to oversee the quarantine of fish and allow the release from the quarantine place as well as getting the animals to the quaratine facility in a safe way. Where someone who runs a quaratinte place must just make sure that he quarantines the things and make sure no disease get out etc. :D

I will be speaking to someone who might know the answer tomorrow if Kev doenst answer it in the mean time as he will surely know the answer :lol:

DiscusMan

[kevkoi]

We're so in the wrong country to be keeping fish really.... sigh. AQIS and our Biodiversity act is making it harder and harder for exotic (other than natives I mean) to come into the country! The way they are going with the new laws, in 30years time we all may as well be keeping just Australian natives!

Anyway.... the procedure has a lot of red tape involved.

Firstly, not only have you got to be a lisenced importer registered with AQIS, you also have to have a quarantine room built to AQIS standards and requirements to start importing fish. Our facility cost us close to $70K to build! This import lisence must be renewed every year...... ie more fees and charges!

Secondly, your exporter/breeder would have to have a special lisence to export to Australia. Most breeders in Asia hear that u are from "Australia" and they just run away! LOL.... An International export lisence is not good enough for Australia! They must have the AQIS approval lisence, meaning their packing, water storage, water treatment must meet AQIS/Australian standards.

There's a manual about 4inches thick to read thru!

Then once the fish get here to Australia, AQIS will go and inspect the boxes to make sure that the fish that are coming in are the fish that are on the invoice, and to make sure that everything is fine and swell.... I once had a whole box of fish confiscated because there was a bit of mud residue inside the foam box!!! (No compensation paid by AQIS!)

Once the fish have been inspected and released to us, we will have to bring the fish to our quarantine facility and sit the fish there for the required period of time. For Discus, it is 2 weeks. The fish would have to be aclimatised to the Australian water and treated if any diseases break out. Any fish that do not make it thru quarantine have to be kept and frozen.

AQIS officers will come out to the quarantine facility after 2 weeks to inspect the discus and have a look at all the frozen dead ones (if any... so far we have only had 2 DOA discus in 3 shipments and never lost one in quarantine *touch wood*). If they feel that the fish are not healty, they can hold the fish back for another week or have a destroy order (whereby they will destroy the remaining fish should they think it poses a threat..). If all goes well, the dotted line is signed by the AQIS officer and the fish are released for public sale. All the dead fish in quarantine are then sent to a contracted biohazard disposal company to be disposed of safely.

So yes... there is the procedure. There are of course fees involved every step of the way.... It cost pretty much the same to get the inspectors to inspect 100 fish or 12000 fish. The more fish you bring in, the more you can spread out the quarantine and other charges. Unless you are going to be doing some serious importing of fish, it's not worth putting up all the capital to build the facility and keep the import lisence up to date.

No other country I know of makes fish importers jump thru so many hoops b4 they can get some fish! But the funny thing is that the majority of the Australian public don't understand/don't know about this... They often compare fish prices of ours to those overseas and whinge.

http://www.aquabid.com/cgi-bin/auction/auction.cgi?fwdiscus&1079967903
For instance, on Aquabid, this 4" (by the picture I think they are talking about 4" total length including tail as the fish don't look like they are 4" Standard lengh... more like 3") Blue diamond is offered for US$30 (AUD$40.10)... The Americans do not have quarantine laws and charges which we have to incur here. They get the fish off the plane and straight on to the customer... no quarantine period, no quarantine charges and certainly no risk of losing a fish in that quarantine period.

We sell the same fish here in Aust for AUD$45 ($5 more than our fellow Americans when we take so much more risk and pay so much more fees etc etc), and people whinge....

It is no wonder why most shops will not stock quality discus here in Australia.... They are so much work to keep them looking healthy and the returns are poor.

Sorry.... had a rough day... just had to let off some steam. :oops:

kev

[flukes]

Whoa, makes me want to start a discus farm in australia!! If we cant import them might aswell breed them here. Only thing is your probably better off doing it in QLD because in melbourne you would be paying a fortune in heating bills. Starting up you would be paying a fortune to get the "rarer" fish imported but once they were and you had a breeding pair you would make a fortune. Id love to start a discus farm in australia but then you need ABN's and iam sure there would be inspections done on these places regularly.

What really pisses me off is, why dont these people care about shops that house discus in the poorest of quality conditions, In melbourne we have a shop called .....................EDIT*, and i cant see the passion. There discus are crowded into little jebo aquariums, which get a water change probably every month. And the laws are worried about fish coming from over seas that are the best fish in the world.

Do we have a discus farm in australia?? I mean i know we have big breeders who deal 100's of discus from there house's but is there a large farm dedicated to breeding discus?? Well if there is not we need one. And Kev your the man too do it :lol: (along with me as your 2nd in charge :wink: )

[kevkoi]

There are already Australian Discus Farms around.. and as u rightly pointed out, there is already one in QLD. Sadly, they cannot keep up with the new strains that come out of Asia all the time, plus the Australian market is not big enough for a few such fish farms let alone one that can breed up to 10000 discus a month! How would u sell 10000 Discus in Australia?? .... There are many fish farms out in Asia because labour, water, electricity, fish food etc etc is cheap and they supply the world market, principally Japan, Taiwan, Europe and USA. Australian bred discus could not compete on the international market because of our overheads.... So unless U want to work at $3 a day and work 14hour days, 7days a week, we won't be starting any big discus farms here any time soon... :lol:

kev

PS: Scott, it's not very nice singling out a certain shop with negative comments... I would suggest you try to go a bit more general. No names required. :wink:

[flukes]

well thats what i thought but then i was told its better to name the shop, because then it will get the bad name by word of mouth and hopefully fix its standards. The way i see if i told you the discus you gave me weren't worth the time of money, then you would do something about it. (Just using you as an example, SLS has the best discus ive seen sold in any retail store.) But yeah ill change the post.... :?

[flukes]

Just a minute bit confused about something, when i first wanted to get discus i was going to get them imported from america (learnt things now) but anyway when i spoke to the guy, i was trying to get 6 discus sent over and all he told me was that they would be checked at the airport and if the passed then they would be sent straight to me. He didn't meantion anything about the AQIS coming to check out the quarintene setup and making sure i had license. Hrrmmm i know he knew i was in Australia because we did discuss it for sometime.
So will this be the procedure is i order 1 fish?? I mean iam sure there would be the same standards for 1 fish or 100 fish but i was wondering if the fish weren't to be for resale then would i still have to have the license and the QT facility.??

Sorry if this bores you kev just intrests me..

Scott

Just got me puzzled as to why he didn't meantion anything, unless he had never imported to australia before and didn't know about our strict import laws. :wink: :?: :roll:

[flukes]

ahhh also whats the farm in Queensland?? Its not bayfish is it??
I mean like just discus breeder or mainly discus.

[kevkoi]

Scott, why don't u try importing some of these discus from this guy in the States?

I guarantee u'll remember this occasion when u tried to bring in some Discus from the USA the way the guy said it would work.... :lol:

U'll be another story for us to talk about down at Quarantine while waiting for the boxes to be inspected... There are so many stories the quarantine officers tell us about when ppl send fish into Australia without the propper documents and lisences... LOL!!

We just heard one about "Bruce Lee" this morning.... His fish are STILL sitting there at Quarantine and it's been 2 weeks. (He got 18 bettas sent over from Thailand....)

[flukes]

ok i get the picture, i need a boat and enough gas to get to penang and back! Ah well just have to get them through you!