Initially, you need to size up the market for the fish you're raising. If your current dealers all carry small fish, you'll want to price your stock to move quickly, before they start to reach a larger size. If, one the other hand, the stores you frequent tend to stock larger fish, you'll want to bring in some of your stock, at a smaller size, to determine the owner's interest in the fish you're raising. If he/she isn't interested there's no reason to invest the extra time to grow the fish to a larger size.
Choosing a fish that almost everyone will recognize, let's use an angel fish as our test case. To give us a scale for the size of the fish, let's use coins that we'll be familiar with. We'll use a nickel for the small size, a quarter for the medium size and a silver dollar for the large size. (Using three sizes will allow you to market your fish to multiple places at various stages of your fish's growth.) First thing, you're the key to an ongoing business. You don't want to sell everything you have. You need to reserve some stock for breeding purposes at a later time. Your breeding stock should ALWAYS be the very best specimens from your fry. Some will need to be retained permanently. Anyone helping you catch fish should be aware that these fish are NOT to be sold by anyone but you.
In order to establish a new customer, your dealer - even the first one, you need to set-up some sort of procedure to showcase your stock for sale. You don't want to bring your stock into the store in an Igloo cooler and expect to get top dollar in cash or trade. The reason? It's not fair to either you or the dealer. Unless the dealer can visually examine your stock he/she can't determine it's worth.
The presentation should be about 6 fish that are representative of the quality of your selection. Picking the very best we've already determined would be a mistake. Those are your future brood stock. Select instead, fish that are close to your very best but with no abnormalities. Fish that are obvious rejects should be pitched or fed to predator fish, as soon as it can be determined that they are unsalable. DO NOT give them away to someone just because you can't bring yourself to cull them properly. If you do, eventually you'll be faced with the knowledge of inferior fish that came from your hatchery. That knowledge alone will hurt but if it were to get out that your rejects, did in fact, escape your hatchery, it'll be an embarrassment hard to live down.
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