tank raised - hardy?

[miniwhinny]

It seems I've read a lot of posts recently of people loosing their tank raised clowns to ill health or not settling in after shipping. Have any of you noticed that captive breds are loosing their natural immunities or is it just normal for a certain percentage of fish not to make it - and as more and more are tank raised it's those ones who are dying and we're hearing about?

 

[garygb]

I only have limited experience, but tank-bred seem hardier and more tolerant to me.

 

[kimsie]

I haven't heard anything at all. If anything - I only hear that captive bred fish are so much MORE stable... I'd love to hear other's thoughts on this - but I buy captive bred whenever possible.

 

[km133688]

I cannot speak for other's experiences but mine are simple to examine. Have had several fish in the few years I have been reefing. The stats are clear to me. 4 to 1 in favor of captive bred.

I acknowledge this is no study, and that my skills in keeping a reef tank in the early days was poor, but I have had both captive bred and wild caught at all times and this is the numbers for me. My fish have all been on the "generally hardy" list, nothing special.

Kevin

 

[km133688]

As I read my previos post I see it is ambiguous. Let me rephrase it.

I have had four times as many wild caught fish die in my keep as I have had captive bred. Indeed, as I look into my tank right now, I see most of what is left are captive bred fishes.

Kevin

 

[SNAKEMANVET]

Correct me if I am wrong.The reason wild caught are not as hardy as captive, some wild fish carry parasites that don't show up until the fish is stressed from being caught, the reason for the 2 week querintine.Like km133688 stated that he had 4 to 1 ratio. Most captives are not exposed to the threat of parasites.I only buy captive fish for that reason. Maybe someone with more experience will help out. HTH

 

[garygb]

Yeah, the parasites are definitely part of the problem, not to mention the toll that being shipped for days from Indonesia has on the clown's general health and resistance.

 

[miniwhinny]

thanks. I'll be shopping for captive breds

 

[salty316]

A little bit of (un)natural selection is involved as well. If a fish is genetically predisposed to survive in captive conditions, for whatever reason, it's offspring will also posess those traits. If a specimen survives and copes well enough to breed, it posesses attributes to survive in captivity and will pass those on to it's young. With each subsequent generation breeding these traits may well be amplified.

 

[vaporize]

From my experience dealing with > 1000 clownfish (I'm a collector), t.r. are almost 2-3X more hardy than w.c. ones. I have performed freshwater dip on alot of clownfish and t.r. ones basically stay alert and swimming the whole time, some of the w.c. ones does not even last 30 seconds. And typically I lose alot less t.r. comparing to w.c. ones unless some strange disease wipe out the whole tank.