Loaches Online Forum

Is $9.99 US a good price for Botia Kubotai?
LFS has about 20 at that price and I want to check here if that is a good bad or great price.

YES :)

I just bought the only healthy one at my LFS for that price. Normally they are $18.99 here

a little pricey... i think i saw a few at petSmart for $5

mistergreen wrote:a little pricey... i think i saw a few at petSmart for $5

Here they were $19.99 a piece and have since been lowered to $9.99 at the PetsMart stores.

botia kubotai were 8.99 here when they had them..but cdn dollars..
and yoyos are 4.99 cdn here..haha..alot less...

-brett.

$15 each is the best I've seen and I bought them out, I've been trying to talk myself out of buying the last 2 $20 ones at petsmart.

tglassburner wrote:Is $9.99 US a good price for Botia Kubotai?

That is a pretty open question for an international forum. It really depends on where you are.

mistergreen wrote:a little pricey... i think i saw a few at petSmart for $5

I think the folks at my local Petsmart have been smoking crack - they are asking $19.99 US for them!

Then again, I just picked up a SIX INCH clown loach there yesterday - yes - SIX INCHES - for $9, and last week several Australian Rainbows for $2.19 US each, when those go for $8 to $13 US in other stores.. Go figure?

Maybe they jack up the prices on one fish to make up for the low price of others?

YellowFinned wrote:

tglassburner wrote:Is $9.99 US a good price for Botia Kubotai?

That is a pretty open question for an international forum. It really depends on where you are.

Yes it is, but the thread does show up some interesting anomolies. What people are not quoting is prize vs size. That will have a bearing.
If there's a visible pattern it would appear that certain US retailers are over-pricing the fish. These IRO US$20 per fish prices were the norm over 5 years ago when the species first hit the trade, but certainly here in Toronto CDN$9.99 would be about the max for a 1.2 to 2" fish, and can be as low as around CDN$6.

There are various factors which contribute to retail price, but there's no way this species ought to sell for nearly US$20 unless they're well over 3" in length.

Martin.

When I first saw them I paid USD2 equiv each for two inchers. Wow, quarter of that now!

Reckon if I found the boys who fished them out along with the rest of their catch, I could get them cheaper still, 'cos they are too small to eat.

Any idea if these are all coming in wild caught or are they being farmed somewhere. I believe the prices at petsmart are very related to how easy it is to farm them. I've heard rumors they own their own fish farms, so that would make sense.

AwesomeCoolstein wrote:Any idea if these are all coming in wild caught or are they being farmed somewhere. I believe the prices at petsmart are very related to how easy it is to farm them. I've heard rumors they own their own fish farms, so that would make sense.

I think they are all wild caught.

Petsmart here actually orders their fish from one main vendor, then when they want something they can't get normally, they order through another LFS that has access to a lot more than they do.

tglassburner wrote:Is $9.99 US a good price for Botia Kubotai?
LFS has about 20 at that price and I want to check here if that is a good bad or great price.

I don't know about around you are, but around here in Sacramento Ca that would be a good price.

The only place around here that seems to have a selection of loaches is Capital Aquarium downtown. They had Sids, Zippers, Kubotai, and Zebra all for around US$12 each. Only problem, they were all SMALL!!! < 2" and most close to only 1"

I picked up 4 sids and the last two remaining Zebras, but it's scary how small they are!!

in Munich loaches from a farm are, unfortunately, more expensive than caught ones. So, the LFS´s hardly offer the ones from a farm...

... 1 Kubotai ... about 10 to 15 Euro (size) (I guess 1Euro = approx 1.3US$)

Wolfram