Tropical Fish Forums

[unissuh]

Just a heads up to any Aussies that don't already know; new import laws that affect all livebearers, anabatoids and cichlids will hit very soon unless a miracle happens. If you're after any rare/rare-ish exotics, now is the time to get them. If you were planning to try x fish in 6 months or a year, seriously, forget about waiting and just do it now, see below for good excuse to spouse/partner/family etc. I would expect that anything that is even vaguely unusual will become much harder if not impossible to find. Anything that does not come in big batches (I.e. anything rare) will be a thing of the past.

You can find the final government report here.

All appeals have recently been announced as rejected - see here.

Also for anyone who is interested, one of the submissions points out a lot of major scientific flaws and holes in the report. Kind of ironic that appeals are not allowed to question the scientific merit or conclusions of the report & the submission was disallowed on those grounds.

tl;dr version;
A proportion of every batch of livebearer, anabatoid & cichlid imported fish will have to be culled & tested for virus infections. Theres a table of the number that have to be tested in the first pdf link, but it's essentially 100% at 20 fish, 50% at 100 fish & then it starts to level off between 50-60 fish tested, hence why anything rare will probably vanish forever.

Think thats bad? Theres more.

The screening test doesn't exist. So any fish included in those 3 major groups will probably vanish for a while, until local breeders pick up the slack or someone invents a test.

PS: Theres an online petition against this here but the way it's going, not going to make any difference. Would need thousands if not tens of thousands of signatures & theres been a measly 300 odd in a month.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[Flame Angel]

Has this come into effect yet?

A lot of it seems pretty ridiculous

[unissuh]

I think there is a lot still going on behind the scenes; it hasn't been implemented yet as far as I know. Last I heard Biosecurity was taking submissions for alternatives, they may be backpedalling on the batch testing procedures.

Rumour has been saying recently that there is some talk of introducing permits for keeping fish though - not sure how this one will go but I am hoping it doesn't get introduced either.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[Flame Angel]

Oh really, so something more reasonable may end up happening?

[unissuh]

It's been posted on a few local forums, occasionally I hear things from a couple of LFSs too.

To be honest I have no idea about the exact details of whats going on, but in general I would expect regulations will only get tighter in this hobby in the future.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light

[Flame Angel]

Oh fair enough. Would think I would hear about things like this...considering I only just finished working in one

Yeah probably. Keep us posted if you hear anything more!

[Flame Angel]

Did you end up hearing much about this?

[unissuh]

To be honest, haven't really heard much more about it since last post. There have been a few mentions on local forums about reviewing noxious lists though (& potentially adding anything not on the import list). Not really sure whats happening.
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Fishing in the Rivers of Light