Hmm, some good and and not so good news. The good news is that healthy thin bar dats are available in good quantity and quality and are reasonably priced. And it is legal to export them. Some of them look really really nice and seem to be quite stable.
The bad news is that air carriers WILL NOT allow me to bring a box of fish home as checked luggage. They all insist that it has to go as cargo. This is annoying as hell, not to mention that it adds several hundred dollars to any shipment I make.
Finally, the news about the wide bars is that there are none available to export. The Thais are just too scared to export them since their king himself told them not to and penalties are severe.
I am drawing up a list of fish I am going to import that includes the following
P. endlicheri
Datnoides sp.
Cichla temensis
A few nice flower horn
P.niger
I can not tell you just yet what the prices will be that I can offer these fish at until I get the final breakdown on shipping costs.