<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7215928#post7215928 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jnowell
The first time I went to Cozumel, I saw 6 pairs of seahorses, 3 clown/anenome pairs, and 5 groupers big enough to swallow me in one bite. Last year I saw no seahorses, the biggest grouper was maybe 2 feet, and I couldn't find a clown or anenome to save my life.
You do know that Clownfish are NOT indigenous to the Carribbean, right? If you saw three clown / anemone pairs, it was because someone local released them..
When I worked in a LFS, I saw Flame angels that were captive bred, and available at decent prices. Granted, not as cheap as wild caught, but they are not outrageously priced.
I think some fish are better left to mother nature to raise, and some are very easily done by people. This can provide a balance. If the islanders focus on responsible collection of the fish that are tough / impossible to breed (Tangs, Angels, Wrasses), and the breeders focus on the simple things like Clowns, Gobies and Cardinals, overall the hobby would be better if you ask me. I received my share of tran-shipped goods while at the LFS (we were big enough to tran-ship 25+ boxes a week in our prime), and I know that corals do well (with the exception of SPS) and fish are a full 50/50. A simple estimate is that it takes 10 WC Clowns to make one reach a home aquarium alive. So much losses in shipping, even when everything is done right. And lets not forget human error (25 boxes that were supposed to just jump planes in LA and then fly to NJ were accidentally sent to Portland, OR where they sat on a cold shipping dock overnight killing everything)..
Fish breeders are often the people letting the scientists know things from their observations. Most people think its the other way around, but really, scientists have no major incentive to figure out the spawning cycles of marine ornamentals, the incubation times, the temps, the foods, etc.. Ornamentals have little to give scientists for the most part, and are not heavily studied. I must say, I have learned more from my fellow hobbyists and the extreme breeders (C-Quest, ORA, etc) than I have from any scientific sources regarding breeding them.
And think about this.. During the "Nemo Craze", the LFS I worked in was bringing in BOXES from ORA each week. No joke, we would sell 300 ocellaris a week, AND they went to "responsible owners", people who would plunk down $300 - $500 to setup a basic 20 or 30g FOWLR so they could keep them properly. Multiply that number by even 10% of the LFS's in the US, and the numbers are astronomical. And lets not forget all of the "less than honorable" fish stores that don't care where that clown goes, and continues to sell fish after fish to a newbie who keeps killing them. That would not be sustainable harvesting in the wild if you ask me.
Some fish should be bred, and other fish will soon be bred. Just think, it wasn't long ago that your typical SW tank was stark bleached coral skeletons, and just 10 years ago, SPS was almost impossible to keep. Hobbyists and the internet have brought this hobby a LONG way in a very short time.
I'll still breed my fish regardless. It's been a LONG time since I've even heard of wild-caught black ocellaris (sharks and crocs keep collectors away).
There is a balance to be struck between wild caught and captive bred. Unfortunately, its difficult to educate the masses of collectors spread out over thousands of islands, and CITES itself is trivial at best considering most fish and game people inspecting it on arrival couldn't tell an acanthastrea from a favia. Heck, we all know plenty of SPS corals cannot even be identified by an expert until it is killed and the skeleton is inspected under a microscope, and yet we expect the under-educated Fish and Game / Conservation officers to enforce laws on animals they couldn't identify!
I doubt that captive breeding will ever hurt the livelihood of the island nations. The demand is still far greater than the supply (have any of you noticed that close to the end of the year, Nov / Dec that some corals are impossible to find? Euphyllias were notable here, hammers, torches and frogspawns were almost impossible to find because the CITES quotas had been filled and none were being shipped out of the islands, yet in January when the numbers were reset, everything was always available again.. If thats the case, then captively fragging and raising them would not hurt the island nations if you ask me.
Finally, some fish will never be captive bred in a garage, basement or even aquaculture facility. The mating rituals of some fish require great depths for them to rise and do a courting ritual, something that we can't even begin to duplicate, so there is no worries that captive breeding will ever completely wipe out the demand for wild caughts.
I would be making money then. If I stuck to an easy species like clowns I'd be making money. But MAYBE I might learn and share enough that someday my pet white elephant project will be one of those easy, commercially viable species.
