Agreed with Yogigan!!! There are really too little people who are REALLY passionate about this hobby. I present my view of the issue:

1. Thirst for knowledge. Most people think that it is easy to breed and raise guppy ... but there is a real difference between raising good guppy or "normal" guppy. Things like food, ability to choose the right guppy to become breeding stock, water quality etc. Starting with the same strain of guppy, two different people with different setup will end up with different guppies after several generations!!!

2. Patience. Talking about several generations, how many of us actually kept the same guppies for more than 5 generations?? I doubt many of us do so!! And if we do NOT do so, how can our guppies even have enough time to EVOLVE into anything better than the F0 stocks???

3. Commitment. If you have the Thirst for Knowledge and Patience, than you should have no problems with either SOURCE of $$$!!! Why?

SOURCE: I've talked to committed people (like regng2001) who goes make trips all over the world just to buy guppies!!! I'm also trying to do the same in the near future. Imagine ... if more of us do so, we will be able EASILY get good stocks just by trading our show guppies!!!

$$$: RM300 to RM1K sound expensive for guppies ... that is, IF you do not have the knowledge, patience, and commitment to breed show guppies!!! Looking at how much people pay for carps and arawanas, I do not believe for a minute that we do not have the cash!!

Assuming that we have knowledge, the batch size of each drop would be large. In just 1 year, you could easily have 100 fishes to sell from just 1 pair. If show quality, I am sure that you can get at least 50 of us to purchase. Assume RM50 per pair for your RM300 pair. That's RM2.5K per year!!! How about RM100 per pair for your RM1K guppy??? That's RM5K per year for you!!!

4. Hype. How did each of us even got to know about fancy guppies??? Not from the local fish shop (LFS) I think!!!! Personally, I got to know just 2 years ago after keeping fish for >7 years!!!! And I found out accidentally while on the internet!!!! Just look at the traffic of our forum!!! It is really sad!!!

What do you guys think we could do to help our hobby???

Maybe I will start by starting a new thread to survey HOW and WHEN we even got to know about fancy guppy in the first place!!!