This one's tailfin is transparent at the top which I thought looked unique and why I picked her... I doubt this variation is a result of CB though.

Maybe the genes ran short of the color ;)

I'm having a really hard time with this thread. It really makes me want to choke someone who would suggest a hobbyist buy a wild caught fish over a captive bred fish.

I would rather kill 100 captive bred fish than kill 1 wild caught fish. Once a fish is taken from the wild it can never be returned. Just in the most recent years has there been some interest in sustainable collection, although the definition of "sustainable" isn't particularly clear yet since there are so many different regions and ecosystems within ecosystems all over the worlds' reefs.

As others already pointed out, there are many fish that die long before they make it to the LFS display tank. Consumers often know little about the journey a fish takes from the ocean to their display tank, and seem to forget about all the fish that don't make it simply because the consumer doesn't see them! Wild caught Clownfish and Dottybacks, which are both easily found captive bred, are both particularly susceptible to Brooklynella. Wild Banggai Cardinals are suspected to often perish from a viral diease that we are just learning about recently and currently. ORA has over 50 different species of fish on their availability list, so there are lots to choose from. Sustainable Aquatics has notoriously LOVELY colored fish. Captive bred fish with poor coloring are a result of poor growout husbandry and nutrition.

For those LFS that claim they lose more captive bred fish than wild caught fish, they need new CB suppliers! A good CB supplier (inc hobbyist breeders) will guarantee their fish. A CB supplier that doesn't guarantee the health of their fish should not be dealt with imo. Even ORA replaces DOAs in my experiences. I've even had ORA replace "designer" clowns (read: expensive clowns) that did poorly upon arrival and perished when the rest of the order did great. ORA is a good company to deal with. I would rather see no captive bred fish in an LFS rather than poor captive bred fish since poor CB fish make a bad name for the whole lot of them.

In my opinion, unless you are a breeder you should not be purchasing many species of wild caught fish including (but not limited to): Banggai Cardinals, Clownfish, Dottybacks, Elacatinus sp Gobies, Assessors, and many Blennies.

If people are having poor luck with their captive bred fish, the sour look should be placed upon the breeder (or possibly the LFS if they have poor husbandry), not the fish itself. There is no reason a captive bred fish should be inferior to a wild caught fish. In my experiences and in my opinion, captive bred fish are superior to wild caught fish given an even playing field!

I understand your sentiment and am sympathetic to your vision. I was the broodstock manager at Proaquatix and have worked with Bill, Arlene, and Katy (the Addisons) at C-Quest. Certainly one extreme is a hobbyist's choice in strictly captive bred. However, there are fish that are abundant such as Royal Grammas, Chromis, shrimps etc... and there are fish caught from areas with effective management through regulations and meaningful enforcement (eg Hawaii, Florida)... and then the other extreme are fish caught with destructive practices, no regulations, or regulations without enforcement... or species that have no reasonableness as pets (eg some diet-specific inverts like starfishes or slugs, butterflies etc). So there's every shade of gray in between these scenarios, and then there's the reality of the market and aquaculture. Costs are high in operations, many species are not economically feasible, bulk of hobbyists have a certain threshold of willingness to pay, and then there's what people want. For example, we'd never have tank raised turbo snails or blue legged hermits due to abundance of cheap wild specimens, but most tanks will want/need them. Realistically, we'd likely always have hobbyists wanting pygmy angels and tangs... it's just what people want.

So in between, there's lots of variations. Just as some folks will choose to be vegan for moral reasons, bulk of consumers are naturally omnivorous.

PS. I wouldn't let Gold Aquarium get under anyone's skin with this CB comment.

They've been around for a while and offer good livestock prices... but some things that they say are a bit whacky.

I was there yesterday looking at a bottle of Seachem Reef Complete and I think a bottle of Reef Carbonate. I just wanted the guy's opinion so I asked him, should I get both bottles? He said I have to get everything (and proceeded to point out 8 different bottles) or my reef tank would start to die in about a month. I was actually hoping for some intelligent thoughts on the reactivity of CA and carbonate but that obviously wasn't where the conversation went. He just kept rambling on as I smiled and nodded, ending with him giving me his business card to call when I needed more advice. I did pick up a nice little red monti frag for $20, pre-mounted.

Hi Reef Geek, welcome to the forums! I see you're relatively new here. I appreciate your point of view and experiences in this subject, and I'm interested to read the articles you have in your signature. :)

In your first post (just after mine) when you say "your" are you referring to me or the OP? I agree with your sentiments on the subject; the hobby will likely always be "omnivorous". I just get frustrated when hobbyists are buying wild caught fish that are readily available captive bred. I really think it should be more difficult to import these fish than it currently is. We are getting closer to being able to offer captive bred fish such as Dwarf Angels, but it will be hard to beat a wild caught price when it takes many months to raise these fish to salable size!

Very interesting discussions going on :D

Many LFS do this sadly. Chemicals, food and other consumables are either good profit or inventory that has been sitting around too long that they are desperate to sell. Have a look at some of the older bottles on the shelves, if they have an imploded appearance it is because they are so old that the internal air/gases have slowly leaked out THROUGH the vinyl bottle of the years. Don't buy those ones for sure.

Sorry for the hijack...

On topic the hobbyists and industry need to develop a list of our hobby fish that are endangered, threatened and abundant etc. Similar to what the Canadian food stores are doing now with the fish we eat.
http://www.seachoice.org/search/

I agree with you mindy. In fact if it were my call a wild caught fish would cost 3x more then a captive bred of the same species. I wont buy a fish that I can buy a captive bred alternative of and at the rate things are moving with breeding it wont be long until 100 species are on the market.

Thanks Myka. I meant I applaud your (specifically to you) conviction and sentiment to cb.

Ideally speaking, it would be natural to assume (assumption 1) that conscientious hobbyists would buy cb when it is available over wild caught of the same and would be willing to pay the price required for aquaculture (as they said they would). It may even be easy to believe (assumption 2) that if a new species of cb were available, it would sell... or at least inch towards increasing popularity of cb. I used to believe this, but have found that this is simply not true. I captive bred Royal Grammas but found that the small larvae (compared to clowns) meant more work and lower survival rates to metamorphosis. Wild caught were readily available in reasonable health quality, and at prices that make cb unsellable (assumption 1 false). There were species that were natural to pursue once I was captive breeding that family group, but found that just because you can provide it cb, doesn't mean that people want it (assumption 2 false). Example of species that were produced but did not sell well: Meiacanthus mosambicus (not all that colourful), M. smithi, Pseudochromis polynemus (not all that colourful), P. steenei and P aureus... cb or not they're still a big aggressive dottyback with only males having colour.

I also don't believe you can do away without wild caught. I grew up working in an aquarium shop in Halifax, I'm confident that any shop that stopped offering wild caught would be uncompetitive. In terms of aquaculture limitations, many species aren't economically feasible due to their long larval phase--the costs of rearing them would be cost prohibitive for any consumer to buy. Even if price weren't a factor, there's difficulty with live foods needed that are smaller than rotifers. There's been some break-throughs with Centropyge, Zebrasoma, Synchiropus, and many post-larval trapped & reared fishes here and there... but there's not been any scalability to their methods to provide thousands of specimens... sometimes success has been limited to hundreds of hours of work to rear about 10 fish.

I've since gone for more school and learned quite a bit about business (and left the fish business). Marketing simply doesn't work like this. It's not wise to produce it and then try to 'market' it. Marketing is about finding out what are the different segments (groups) of consumers that make up the current market, what does each segment value/want, how much they are willing to pay, and what is your bulletproof business model/plan to win market share against incumbents. Only then should a product go to market. It would be like finding out that (not true, just hypothetical) 30% of hobbyists want the cheapest fish no matter what, 10% want cb no matter what, 60% want cb if available in good colour/size/health but no more than on average $5 more than wild... then a farm should target to go to market but manage its costs so the fish can retail at the fair market value for the biggest segment (it can't stay in business based on the 10% die hard fans). Unfortunately, the economics just don't work for what consumers are really willing to pay due to the labor intensity of aquaculture. That's why Frank Hoff started Instant Ocean Hatcheries in 1974 and 38 years later, there's still only about 4 north american companies (of notable scale) doing marine ornamental aquaculture. ORA, as successful as they are, had to have financial support from grants and corporate donations for many years. (my understanding only, but debatable) Proaquatix, Sustainable Aquatics, C-Quest were started by private monies, whose stakeholders loved fish more than other investments opportunities.

And so you have it, the Coles notes version of why cb is only a supplemental supply of livestock at present.