ORA livestock:what would you buy?
 

I'm going down to the southern states next week and I thought about stopping by ORA farms and picking up a couple of nice pieces.

I'm thinking of getting a clam or two, acros, montis, another sps depending on the selection. Mushrooms and zoas can be imported without paperwork, as long as they are properly documented and on man made plugs, so I was thinking of some of the tougher to acquire typical CITES required stony corals.

If you could, what would you buy and bring back to Canada?

Am I missing something here?

Regarding the mushrooms and zoas or the stony corals?

Randall's assessor!!!!

????????

Sorry, I am still a newbie in terms of this board and I don't understand the inside references. If someone could explain or pm me that would be greatly appreciated.

This is a randells assessor

http://i1217.photobucket.com/albums/...91/null-15.jpg

Get there fish because aqua cultured
coral are available anywhere.

the CITES process is typically now a minimum 2 month period and no store or company will go through the headache of it for one person or one small order.
without CITES, trying to get any coral beyond the border could land you in trouble.
I know people who have had their zoa frags seized even though they were on man made plugs.
Although I am sure that cross border coral shopping is done on a regular occurrence by lots of people, I personally would not recommend.
ignorance of the law is not a defence against being charged.
showing up at the border with a CITES species and saying "I didn't know" won't cut it in most cases.
you could be charged and at the best case have your stuff confiscated.

Ok, I'm a schmuck! Doh!

Nice fishy btw. How long do you think they'd last if they were my carry on? 24 hours?

I am NOT looking to circumvent the CITES process whatsoever, hence purchasing ORA livestock.

You still need CITES for ORA corals and clams

Wow that is a gorgeous fish! Do they naturally swim upside down like that or is that something ORA bread into them?

Way to much work for a couple of corals. FYI some have "snuck" into canada already which are the more desired sps pieces

That is the behaviour of Assessors. Typically they are found swimming upside down under caves. Super cool fish. I remember seeing for thethe first time and being like "errrr.... Your fish is broken".

that's cool!

I said the exact thing to lfs employee when they had a whole tank of yellows .

Here is the CITES appendices for the species that are required to have a permit.

http://www.cites.org/eng/app/2013/E-...2013-06-12.pdf

Couple things. The permits etc will cost you about $500.
And two, ora doesn't give out its collection locations making it impossible to bring back their corals legitimately.

I would be ever so grateful if you could post a link to the fee schedules.

You'll have to talk to a broker, or get chummy with your lfs and ask them if you can use their people.

The permits (and shipping) are why everything is so much more expensive here. A flame angel is what 80$ in store. They will have paid 15 bucks for that fish from the wholesale. But even at 80$ the store is hardly making anything at all. I know a couple places only bring in the fish and corals to get service clients because that's the only part that makes money.

I tried to bring up a big order. But ora won't give up enough information to get the permits. And just because a piece has been aquacultured for 15 years doesn't matter, they still need the location of original collection. And because of the needed paper trail you can't buy from hobbyists. Not legitimately anyways.

You, as an individual, will not be able to get CITES from the USA
No US wholesaler will sell to someone without a business license and no store will go through the hassles of getting the paperwork
The only way you will get hard corals or clams across the border as an individual is illegally

Not true.
I had a wholesaler in the states that would do it all, but required a significant purchase.
Although I'm not sure if I needed to give my business license from my electrical company to them. It was just too expensive.

It's way easier to go to your lfs and ask if you can get in on their order, tell them you'll assume all responsibility for the boxes you order. Makes it cheaper for everyone. But probably have to be a 1000$ order at least. And if they are all doa then that's too bad, you have to eat it.