Local stores usually buy fish from people, but chain store like petco and petsmart do not. It is against their policy. Fish are often shipped. A few people on here have gotten bettas. I'd love to be able to afford some of the $300 goldfish on fishsempai which would be shipped. Goldfish have quite a few more shipping regulations when coming into the country than others because they can spread disease and people like to release them. If you were able to ship them to Florida, you would not want to claim them as goldfish. Any other legal fish would be ok. You'd want to ship the fish in a bag and the bag would be inside a styrofoam cooler so it would be safer. I've never shipped an animal though.