bayareaquarist
New member
RE: Mimic Octo @ Exotic
!~Go check it out~!
!~Go check it out~!
RE: Mimic Octo @ Exotic
- Thread starter bayareaquarist
- Start date
buttons buster
New member
Is it for sale?
How much?
How much?
dots
Premium Member
I can see it now: very expensive, someone will want it and can't buy it, it will be sold the next day or die.
I love these threads, always fun to read and watch the firestorm they start. First the large carpet, them some rare angel, who can forget the gem tang in the nano, love it!!!
You have to hand it to them, its a good marketing tactic, that tends to be very effective here.
Now, where is my popcorn?
I love these threads, always fun to read and watch the firestorm they start. First the large carpet, them some rare angel, who can forget the gem tang in the nano, love it!!!
You have to hand it to them, its a good marketing tactic, that tends to be very effective here.
Now, where is my popcorn?
matttaylor
Jeeper in my free time
My first thought was i want one... then the realization that i can't keep it with my fish, and it would end up a chew toy for my dog.
If i had an appropriate tank for one i would attempt to keep it. But alas no such luck. I hope whoever gets it knows what they are in for.
If i had an appropriate tank for one i would attempt to keep it. But alas no such luck. I hope whoever gets it knows what they are in for.
buttons buster
New member
I wasn't going to buy it, just wanted to see if it was.
And how much they go for
And how much they go for
philter4
New member
Is it a mimic or a wonderpus? Back home FL they are relatively common, and cheap (compared to this coast) around $100. The wonderpus on the other hand is $300.00 and looks way cooler and more impressive then any miomic. They are not as common but color pattern is brighter and much more defined then the mimics I have seen. Once I had seen both sp, I would take a wonderpus over a mimic even at the higher cost. Cool animal either way, nice to see rare animals making it into the hobby.
bayareaquarist
New member
Its going for about $200...I just find it interesting to view such animals first hand...Oh and its a mimic for sure~!
bored4long
New member
This comment just terrifies me. I'm glad it wasn't made by a MARS member.
philter4
New member
I am a MARS member, and I am an avid collector of very rare animals, let me give you guys 2 examples of how important it is to maintain and collect the rare things.
1st desert pup fish, most are isolated to 1 or 2 very small habitats in the wild, many have become extinct because as the water table had been lowered for humans several have become extinct. The only ones left are in captivity and being bred by hobbiests, no govt funding for them. If collecters didn't keep them they would be gone forever.
2nd in 2000 scientist found a tiny zebra striped monkey in brazil. Immediatly they put it on the endangered sp list because of its limited range. The valley was logged in 2004 and no more monkey. If they would have collected some, sold them to breeders, used the money to purchase the valley no loggers would have been allowed to take the habitat away.
With things like this in mind,(and new reserch see Nat Geo on collecting in Sulawasi) both of these octopuses are more common and wide spred then priviously thought but they come from mud flat environments, not good diving or high priority to save, if we use the money from collectors to preserve habitat the animals and the hobby will benifit beyound just the animals in our tanks.
There are examples like this all over the world, I see it when I dive, it is illegal for me to take a stony coral from the reef, but it is OK for hotels to refortify the beach which silts out acres and acres of reef habitat. Killing sponges, corals and covering up the hard top of the reef until currents/waves/storm uncover it, but now no life until it is colonized byt micro/macro inverts. If people would use part of the money in the pet trade to protect the environment the animals are a renewable resource.
Just my 2 cents about the view of collectors and the import of unusual/rare animals.
1st desert pup fish, most are isolated to 1 or 2 very small habitats in the wild, many have become extinct because as the water table had been lowered for humans several have become extinct. The only ones left are in captivity and being bred by hobbiests, no govt funding for them. If collecters didn't keep them they would be gone forever.
2nd in 2000 scientist found a tiny zebra striped monkey in brazil. Immediatly they put it on the endangered sp list because of its limited range. The valley was logged in 2004 and no more monkey. If they would have collected some, sold them to breeders, used the money to purchase the valley no loggers would have been allowed to take the habitat away.
With things like this in mind,(and new reserch see Nat Geo on collecting in Sulawasi) both of these octopuses are more common and wide spred then priviously thought but they come from mud flat environments, not good diving or high priority to save, if we use the money from collectors to preserve habitat the animals and the hobby will benifit beyound just the animals in our tanks.
There are examples like this all over the world, I see it when I dive, it is illegal for me to take a stony coral from the reef, but it is OK for hotels to refortify the beach which silts out acres and acres of reef habitat. Killing sponges, corals and covering up the hard top of the reef until currents/waves/storm uncover it, but now no life until it is colonized byt micro/macro inverts. If people would use part of the money in the pet trade to protect the environment the animals are a renewable resource.
Just my 2 cents about the view of collectors and the import of unusual/rare animals.
FoothillCorals
Premium Member
philter4, I do not agree with you. I will use the Banggai Cardinalfish as my example. They are on the endangered species list now. Due solely to people collecting them for aquariums. And for some reason LFS still order them and sell them. I will not purchase these fish myself and I think less of any store that still stocks them.
matttaylor
Jeeper in my free time
Do you have any pics Matt?
bobbyblank
New member
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11133353#post11133353 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dots
I can see it now: very expensive, someone will want it and can't buy it, it will be sold the next day or die.
I love these threads, always fun to read and watch the firestorm they start. Now, where is my popcorn?
hahahaha, i will take a bowl of that popcorn and sit and watch with you....Is it hot in here or just me :lol:
philter4
New member
FoothillCoral, they are on the endangered sp list because of limited distribution, and if people didn't have them available they could not breed them in captivity. Should something happen to the wild population they will still be able to re-release fish back to the wild, also they can be bought as captive bred. They are not red listed, they can be imported with paperwork. The numbers of animals imported shows how common they are where they are found. If the habitat is destroyed and none were allowed in no more fish for hobbyiest or divers to see. I'm not in favor of over collecting or collecting in a way that destroys the habitat, but to say rare animals should not be available to people who want to care for them is just as bad.
Think of it this way, if any animal considered rare was not allowed in the trade, how would we get new species to keep? Who gets to decide what animals are rare? My example of the wonderpus/mimic stands, it may not be rare just the habitat it lives in is not normally collected so they just don't know. With that being the case how are we to learn how to keep them or possibly breed them (there are several sp of cephalopods being bred for research, food and pets). As I have said before, not that long ago all corals and most marine fish were considedered impossible to keep let alone breed. Who should decide which ones are common enough to allow collection and which ones are not?
Many of the species we keep, have limited range, look at flame wrasse, only found on rubble patches in over 100 ft of some of the hawaiian islands, should they not be allowed to be collected/kept? I'm not saying that wild animals should not be protected, but realize what they should be protected from. I sited a study in a PM I sent earlier and it is relevant here as well. Some research was done on some New Guinea reefs where they took all the angels off a section of reef. On another reef they did not remove any angels. within 3 years of removing the angels all of the species (even rare ones) had settled and recolonized. On the reef that they left alone only the most common species had juvs found habitat and settled. I'm not saying take all the animals, I am saying if you collect areas and protect the breeders or a potion of the reef (site study in Caribbean that said only 10% would be enough to repopulate naso groupers and the success they had with goliath grouper) and if habitat is healthy fish will rebound.
Just another thought to consider is how even the most common animal in our hobby got there in the beginning.
I understand what your point is just consider that others like me believe that collection is the first step in the long term goal of producing captive animals. I love pygmy angels and have collect colonies of 5 different sp so they might be able to breed. Fishers and potters have very limited ranges and now it is not legal to collect them in most of their range (yellow tangs are gettig expensive for the same reason) As the main Hawaiian islands are collected commercially by all those that used to collect the much richer northwest chain what will happen if we don't breed them? I have seen this before, what happens is called commercial extinction where it costs more to collect then you get for the animal. The population then has time to recover, but the individuals that are collected command such a high price that they are unafordable to the average hobbyist. People who love them and would give them the time to find out how to raise the fry couldn't affort them making them disappear from the hobby.
If you think less of a store that sells rare fish look at 2 of the rarest fish in the world. The cherry barb, common in every store is almost extinct in the wild because it was only wild on the island of singapore. The habitat was destroyed by man industrializing the island. What if someone had said don't allow it into the hobby, it would be gone because the habitat it lived in no longer exists. Same goes for whitecloud mountain minnows, they are found only in a small area of china, but people learned to breed them and now they will always be available. I know they are not the same as even keeping a salt water fish, but there are people out there who will put the time and effort into it because the animals are available and we find them appealing for whatever reason.
Again, only my own views.
Think of it this way, if any animal considered rare was not allowed in the trade, how would we get new species to keep? Who gets to decide what animals are rare? My example of the wonderpus/mimic stands, it may not be rare just the habitat it lives in is not normally collected so they just don't know. With that being the case how are we to learn how to keep them or possibly breed them (there are several sp of cephalopods being bred for research, food and pets). As I have said before, not that long ago all corals and most marine fish were considedered impossible to keep let alone breed. Who should decide which ones are common enough to allow collection and which ones are not?
Many of the species we keep, have limited range, look at flame wrasse, only found on rubble patches in over 100 ft of some of the hawaiian islands, should they not be allowed to be collected/kept? I'm not saying that wild animals should not be protected, but realize what they should be protected from. I sited a study in a PM I sent earlier and it is relevant here as well. Some research was done on some New Guinea reefs where they took all the angels off a section of reef. On another reef they did not remove any angels. within 3 years of removing the angels all of the species (even rare ones) had settled and recolonized. On the reef that they left alone only the most common species had juvs found habitat and settled. I'm not saying take all the animals, I am saying if you collect areas and protect the breeders or a potion of the reef (site study in Caribbean that said only 10% would be enough to repopulate naso groupers and the success they had with goliath grouper) and if habitat is healthy fish will rebound.
Just another thought to consider is how even the most common animal in our hobby got there in the beginning.
I understand what your point is just consider that others like me believe that collection is the first step in the long term goal of producing captive animals. I love pygmy angels and have collect colonies of 5 different sp so they might be able to breed. Fishers and potters have very limited ranges and now it is not legal to collect them in most of their range (yellow tangs are gettig expensive for the same reason) As the main Hawaiian islands are collected commercially by all those that used to collect the much richer northwest chain what will happen if we don't breed them? I have seen this before, what happens is called commercial extinction where it costs more to collect then you get for the animal. The population then has time to recover, but the individuals that are collected command such a high price that they are unafordable to the average hobbyist. People who love them and would give them the time to find out how to raise the fry couldn't affort them making them disappear from the hobby.
If you think less of a store that sells rare fish look at 2 of the rarest fish in the world. The cherry barb, common in every store is almost extinct in the wild because it was only wild on the island of singapore. The habitat was destroyed by man industrializing the island. What if someone had said don't allow it into the hobby, it would be gone because the habitat it lived in no longer exists. Same goes for whitecloud mountain minnows, they are found only in a small area of china, but people learned to breed them and now they will always be available. I know they are not the same as even keeping a salt water fish, but there are people out there who will put the time and effort into it because the animals are available and we find them appealing for whatever reason.
Again, only my own views.
FoothillCorals
Premium Member
philter4, You make some good points. I still stand by my comment on the Banggai Cardinalfish. The fact that they are so easily bred in captivity, means that there is no reason to be collecting an endangered species from the wild anymore. Yes I agree that rare animals should be available to potential breeders. But I don't like the fact that those same animals are also available to beginner hobbyists and poorly ran pet stores (some, not all) to kill though.
philter4
New member
Not to beat a horse to death, but again who is to say that a beginner shouldn't be allowed to become a breeder or to have a certain fish? While I agree that Banggai cardinal doesn't need to be collected, all we as responsible consumers have to do is stop buying wild caught fish. Also for those people who feel this strongly, start breeding one specie each and distributing them. If we all only bred one think of how many species would no longer be collected.
My feelling on the mimic/wonderpus if as follows, it is cost prohibited so only a few will be sold, and these to the hobbyiest that is going to give them the very best conditions/chance for survival. Would you shell out $200 for an animal that you weren't pretty sure you could keep alive? After 1 doesn't sell the LFS wont want to put out the money to just stock an expensive non sellable animal. No LFS buys any from a wholesaler, no wholesalers from a collector, no more wild caught animal. The people who really want them get them, and the wild population is no longer collected. The other option is they find lots of them, realize they are common, price comes down but it is still an octopus so distribution is limited to the few people willing to give them their own tank, again no need for more then a few into the hobby per year. Both options leave the breeding population sustainable in the wild. As conciensious hobbyiests we need to do our part to protect both the animals being brought in and the ones left in the wild.
Poorly ran pet stores should be either brought up to par or stayed away from. If any retail business doesn't compete or give a quality product it eventually goes away.
My last thought on this at least in this thread, if you want I'm more then happy to debate the issue privately or in person (I'll be at this month MARS meeting), and I agree with many of your points, they just shouldn't apply as a blanket to all.
My feelling on the mimic/wonderpus if as follows, it is cost prohibited so only a few will be sold, and these to the hobbyiest that is going to give them the very best conditions/chance for survival. Would you shell out $200 for an animal that you weren't pretty sure you could keep alive? After 1 doesn't sell the LFS wont want to put out the money to just stock an expensive non sellable animal. No LFS buys any from a wholesaler, no wholesalers from a collector, no more wild caught animal. The people who really want them get them, and the wild population is no longer collected. The other option is they find lots of them, realize they are common, price comes down but it is still an octopus so distribution is limited to the few people willing to give them their own tank, again no need for more then a few into the hobby per year. Both options leave the breeding population sustainable in the wild. As conciensious hobbyiests we need to do our part to protect both the animals being brought in and the ones left in the wild.
Poorly ran pet stores should be either brought up to par or stayed away from. If any retail business doesn't compete or give a quality product it eventually goes away.
My last thought on this at least in this thread, if you want I'm more then happy to debate the issue privately or in person (I'll be at this month MARS meeting), and I agree with many of your points, they just shouldn't apply as a blanket to all.
Similar threads
