You know at One point I made
$20,000 in one month from my aquarium Hobby in today's video. I'm going to tell you how I did it
Hello, my fellow
diy fish Keepers so last week I asked you guys for some topics and
Suggestions on what we should do for this week's topic of the week many of you requested
how to make money from the Hobby others requested some breeding along with a slew of other
Suggestions [in] today's video we will be covering how to make money however. I'm not going to cover it in general
I'm going to share a story with you [guys] about how I made a lot of money yet
[I] really want to warn you about everything else. You're not thinking about so many of you guys know [that] I love discus
They're a center focus of my hobby and have been for almost 10 years now
Any discus keeper at some point or [another] within their hobby have thought about breeding their discus for a number of reasons it's extremely rewarding
You feel like you have a massive hand at the end result because it is so such a hands-on experience
And the fact that discus are a [high-dollar]
Fish means that the fry will fetch a lot of money for you which in turn can help pay for your discus, hobby?
and/or Your Hobby in General
So obviously that had crossed my mind at one point or another as well until a point in time about what three years ago when?
I was constantly thinking about it now unfortunately [for] me. I can't just be normal and dabble around with breeding
I figured if I'm going to do it
I have to set up some breeding systems and rearing tanks and go full at it now
I never really meant to document the process it was more so for fun as well as the
Experience, so I don't really have much footage of what I did however
I do have a lot of footage that are my videos and my discus so any footage that you see within here is mine
I also don't want to come across the wrong way here. These are my fish
I really did enjoy them
I started the breeding project mainly for fun as well as the experience making money from it was a total afterthought
And I actually wasn't prepared for what was all included but that's exactly what we're going to talk [about] today
So let's first start off with the [setup] what I actually set up for with this discus breeding project
and then we're going to move into a lot of the costs and
Really breaking down how the money was made if you want to learn how to breed discus in general
I can certainly cover that in a future video
So if you do want to see that leave me a comment down below as well
So I start with setting up this breeding system. I decided that each pair would be connected to a main system
so I took 4 33 gallon tanks and
Set them on a rack
[two] on top two on bottom now the two top tanks would drain into the two bottom tanks and those two bottom tanks would drain
Into a sump that was on the floor the sump would return the water to the top and that would complete the cycle
I used a wet/dry filter or a triple [tower] to ensure that the water was highly oxygenated
The rearing rack or where I was going [to] raise the fry consisted of something similar there was 220 gallon tanks on top
Followed by a 70 gallon tank in the middle and a hundred and [fifty] gallon tank on bottom again
They all fed down to one another and then returned to the top
I also have a 300 gallon Fiberglass tank on Standby in case I got overrun with discus
Which I actually did
So the way this setup would work is as the parents would produce the fry they would eventually move into the top 20 gallon tanks
On the rearing rack and as they grew they would go into the 70 gallon, and then as they grew even bigger
They got down to the hundred and fifty which at that point
I figured [there] would be time to sell so about 10 months into getting the disc is set up they started breeding in
producing viable fry on a consistent Basis and
they did so for about four months and out of those four months that I allowed them [to] breed they produced about 20 batches of
fry with an average of about 50 fry per Batch meaning I got almost a thousand discus out of them within that four month period
Now before I got to that point though
I really had a hard time with accepting the fact that I was going to have to sell these guys
I really changed my mind on wanting to do this for money, and I actually became more attached to the fry themselves
I really wanted to grow them out again and grow out a beautiful discus tank
Potentially braid the fry and kind of keep that
lifecycle going but
Obviously costs were building up the initial cost the ongoing costs and so forth and those are some of the things I really wasn't expecting
But it's easy to lose focus when your get excited about setting up a tank
You kind of don't really think about the long term eventually though
I had to sell them and they sell for an average of [20] dollars each that might seem like a very
little amount of money compared to prices that you might see which is typically averaging between 50 and
$100 because these [discus] were upwards of [4] inches big by the time I sold them however
I didn't sell them 1 2 3 at a time [the] minimum
I was selling was typically six at a time or 12 at a time
And then I actually shipped a lot of them and sold the big box stores where they would buy 30
40 50 at a time some places even wanted a couple of hundred
Needless to say I got rid of every one of them within about four or five weeks and ended up with that twenty thousand dollars
Approximately, but what about costs okay? So we've made twenty thousand dollars now
let's talk about [what] it costs to set up and the
Ongoing [costs] and some of this might be a little shocking to you guys
and this is what I really wanted [to] get into so to set up all the
Tanks the equipment the pumps the heaters the lights the lids you name it the stands the actual tanks themselves
Cost about two thousand dollars total, and I feel as though. I did that as
cost-effectively as possible for the amount of tanks and the sizes that I used
Again, that's not that bad for the discus there was three active breeding pairs
It's very common for breeders to go for about $500 piece for obvious reasons one batch of fry
And they'll pay for themselves three times over so to put a value on those three pairs of discus. We're going to call them
$1500 so right there we have about
$3,500 in start-up costs, which still isn't bad because we have [20,000] dollars to work with so what about the ongoing costs
well, that's where you're really going to start paying the real money, so I kind of broke this down into
three categories
Which is maintenance costs resources?
[and] food so food is feeding all of these discus for about 15 months and on average
Over the course of that 15 months I paid about $100 a month for their food, and I actually made [it] myself
But when you're feeding upwards of a thousand discus for months on end
It adds up quickly now the
Resources would be heated water for water changes in your power usage and on average that cost me about
$80 a month which isn't bad considering
How many tanks I set up and the power they used followed by maintenance costs?
And this is something [that] you don't really think about because you have to change mechanical media you need
Different types of nets you need sometimes you need met patience
Just ongoing cost like that
And those can easily add up over time as well and my cost for that was about
$30 a month which isn't bad again for that many fish. So my ongoing costs for about two [hundred] and ten dollars now
I'm actually only going to calculate about
Fourteen months of usage here because that's all I had receipts for and that equalled up to two thousand nine hundred and forty dollars
For the entire fourteen months now if we add up our ongoing costs plus the cost of [start-up]
We're only at six thousand four hundred and forty dollars
Lots of meat left on the bone of that twenty thousand the number one thing people don't consider when generating
Revenue or starting up a new business or making money on the side is the amount of time you have to invest
To be able to get to that point and for me
I spend about three hours a day with my tanks cleaning them feeding them and so on
over the course of those fourteen months about three hours a day equalled about
850 hours there has to be a dollar value put on your own time so you do need to consider that now
I'm not going to count the time that it took to sell or the waiting around
I had to do during the month that I was selling or any of the time spent marketing and answering emails and so forth [a]
Tremendous amount of time went into that a lot of the waiting around was people were late showing up
Or they canceled and so Forth whenever you sell something online
You can expect to have a tremendous amount of your time totally wasted now
I'm in nova Scotia Canada, and if I sell something that's [business-related]. [I] have to pay taxes on [that]
There's a sales tax of 15 percent so right off the bat we have to go back to that [20,000] and take off
[15%] I didn't charge the customers 15% I included 15% into the cost so out of that
[20,000] I have to take
$3,000 off right off the top and not even think twice about it. So that automatically drops us down to
$17,000 then we take that 17,000 and take off our operating and startup costs
And we're now down to just over 10,000 again $10,000 is still a lot [of] money
especially [to] get it all in one month, but now that
$10,000 I also have to claim toward my personal income because that's what I'm considering my profit
That's what I'm paying myself and because this bumped me up into a different bracket the way orkut axes work here in Canada
[I] had to pay
17.5% [on] that ten thousand which knocked it down to eight thousand seven hundred so out of that
Twenty Thousand Dollars
[I] really only made eight thousand seven hundred, but wait if we calculate in our two hundred and fifty plus
Definitely matt a big plus hours into that we're working for about ten dollars an hour
So really was it worth it for that ten dollars an hour
Well to get it all at once sort of made it feel better
But if that's what I was getting paid for on a continuous, basis like on a daily basis or a weekly basis
I certainly wouldn't have done it and the reasons are simple it took a tremendous amount of my time
[I] can always make more money
But I can't make more time the second thing is it took a lot of the fun away from my hobby
By the time I got around to selling and got off that rush of starting to sell I
Realized that I don't want to do this anymore
This is not why I got into the [hobby] and is totally taken a lot of the excitement
Enjoyment and fun out of these [disqus] you know you know sometimes money
Just ruins things and the fact that it took so much time
[I] still had my channel to run and my channel this YouTube channel takes even more time to do
Plus work a normal [full-time] job. So things really just [added] up
It was just too much to [handle]
But when you kind of get into the [zone] you don't realize how much time you're using up for this, hobby
Another huge thing is obviously we're talking [about] taxes
And which is business-related with that said there's also some other stipulations that I have to follow if I'm selling
Tangible goods out of my house which requires people to come into my house and buy them I have to have a specific
zoning Permit and Insurance I
Wasn't set up for that at all and I actually had no idea. I needed it
I probably could have gotten a lot [of] trouble
The unfortunate thing is is that at this point when I got to selling this is when the disc is breeding would have been most
Profitable I've already paid off
I've broken even all I have to cover is ongoing costs the only thing I have to worry boat is
Producing more and more discus and keeping them available. I guess it's just not in me to look at my fish as dollar signs
Another big reason why I probably wouldn't get back into it. [I'm] you know on top of the time it takes
the laws and the taxes and so Forth is the [fact] that I
Was actually taking [advantage] of a lot through this process
One of my overall goals was to provide quality
discus
Locally just make them available
[I] really wanted my fellow hobbyist in my local vicinity an immediate area and even you know
close to
Provinces to be [able] to experience what I experienced with my [discs] is that rewarding feeling?
so a lot of the times I
would I was selling my discus for really really cheap next to nothing [and]
unfortunately
More times than I'd like to admit the people we're taking them from my house
to the pet store getting store credit and
kind of just taking off from there getting money or
Whatever they get from the pet store other people were putting them on line like Kijiji and Craigslist
And asking for literally ten [times] what they paid for them
Which I guess I can't get mad because once that you once you buy it yours do what you want with it
But you know my intentions really were to make them affordable just so you can
Just see you can enjoy them not so you can make money off them, but again
I guess that's really not that's none of my business once they leave my door really
Again, just a little disappointed
So I guess overall I enjoyed the process however
I don't want to do it anymore
And this is something that I really wanted you guys to consider is that when you get into breeding fish and looking at generating
revenue, there's much more to consider than
Just the end result sure it's going to be fun sure you're going to bake make money
But everything in between is what you need to really [focus] on and consider
Anyways, I [think] that I've really covered what I wanted to say this is kind of a story that I want a lot of people
Ask you why I don't bring discus anymore, and there's a multitude of reasons, but this was pretty much it anyways
That's it for me. I'll see you guys next time for a new topic of the week
[oh], and what did I do with that money well?
This was a year or two ago, but I bought more fish and built more tanks
you