Importing Fish to Aus

[Steph & Dave <caligula@tig.com.au>]

As Matthew says the process for importing fish (and a lot of other
things) into Australia is extremely rigorous.

This is mostly due to worries about disease!  For your information
Australia is the only continent free of rabies, foot&mouth and anthrax
to name a few highly contagious animal to human transferable diseases,
(ok so fish dont carry 'em) and I for one would like to keep it that
way.  If it means living with strict (not impossible) quarantine
regulations then I am happy to do so.

On the good side the whole Apistogramma genus is on the 'allowed' list
however the reason we dont get more dwarfs is the interest level is not
very high eg the importers cant make that much money from it.  Everyone
seems to be into africans.  

The other problem is the quality of the fish being received.  I know
someone very 'into' dwarfs who persuaded the fish shop he worked for to
order some. 20-30 fish of 3 different apisto species were ordered and
not one lasted more than 2 weeks in the shop.  The fish shop owner
hadn't and wouldn't even make them available for sale as they were such
poor quality fish.

To the person who mentioned rabbits and canetoads!  Rabbits were brought
to Australia by the English when they 'colonised' as a source of food. 
And cane toads in the 50's (roughly) to control another pest in the
sugar cane.  Since then we have learnt our lesson (sortoff) and
biological controls and imports are far more strictly controlled.

Steph

PS: If any of the breeders wanna get a export to Australia license it
would probably provide a huge boost to the Australian dwarf scene. ;)


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