Endler's, Bettas & PLANTS Galore

["Edward Venn" <e_venn at hotmail_com>]

Hi all,

I went to a meeting of the combined JLA, JBBA and JPAA. So in one go I was 
thrust into the 3 parts of the hobby i enjoy mostÐLivebearers, Bettas and 
Plants/Planted Aquariums. The auction was a real eye opener with one breeder 
having over 50 different varieties of guppy/Endler's/picta hybrids. Many 
were varieties and colours never seen in the US or Europe. I personally 
bought several pairs of Betta pugnax, a trio of Brachyraphsis terrabinus and 
about 10kg of plants. I swear my back is permanentally curved from schepping 
them home. I bid on but didn't get a pair of black Betta macrostoma 
(\9,000), some very unusual Austalian Vallisneria (\6,500) and a large bag 
of narrow leaf Java fernÐI decided I couldn't carry that home. We traded 
lots of information and talked shop. I mentioned about your woes with 
youknowho and people were shocked that such a thing would happen.

All told the afternoon and evening was a great success with lots of 
shoptalk, e-mail addresses and wishlists being traded around. I'm due to get 
some lilies, Itoh san has a large collection and he is associated with the 
Nagoya University's Medaka Ark Project. This project is an ongoing 
collection of the many species and subspecies of SE Asian Medaka (Ricefish) 
of which there are over 500 different species and subspecies. I think that 
this is worthy of mention as there are similar projects going on to preserve 
other fish species such as Xixorphorus and Poecilia that I know of.

I'm going to finish up this short bit by just mentioning that many of the 
Japanese members of the clubs go on Aquabid and Aquabotanics homepages. They 
are interested in getting good quality plants and livestock but are very 
disheartened in not being able to bid on many of the auctions or buy due to 
people not wanting to ship overseas. I hope that this changes as many of the 
plants we get are very overpriced. Consider Vallisneria asiatica for 
exampleÐcomes in to the wholesaler at a price of \1,000 for 5 plants (good 
quality) and expect that to double at the petshop. On Aquabid it's 1/4 that 
price for a nice sized bunch.

I guess, in short I'm asking that those members who put plants and fish up 
for sale please consider us poor people overseas who want the items you 
advertise but can't get them unledd the exporter ids willing to ship 
internationally.


Edward Venn,
SMG Holdings Co., Ltd.,
Deux Chateaux Blanc 2-303,
1356 Kobuchi, Kasukabe,
Saitama, Japan


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