Do cleaner wrasse not get ich? Or do you get them their own little cleaner fish? and so on, and so on...oh, the mind boggles!! :lol:

Ok, so how about all of you successful keepers post what you were feeding your fish so that we who are not sucessful have a better chance.

And yet still a fair number of ppl in this thread (considering how many have posted) have posted good things about the ones they keep... So what's to say that its not a bad idea to have one in a tank, because they obviously can survive from what ppl seem to be saying.

We might as well get into the topic of Harlequin shrimp.. they are doomed to die unless you start harvesting star fish for food.

I never meant for this thread to get switched to the ethics of our hobby. If anyone is concerned about the health of our reefs and not doing any damage to them, this hobby is not for you. Everything, at one point, came from the wild.

That being said, the cleaner is still doing good. He gets chased by the six line, but since the six line is afraid of the net and the cleaner isn't, half way thru feeding time I put the net in the tank, the six line runs away and the cleaner comes out for his turn. Still eating lots and seems like he has some personality.

Heh, my understanding is that they don't get ich, but I could be wrong.

I don't really have all those tangs, just one who doesn't really have any ich. Due to the fact that this fish is eating, I feel I can support him with enriched Mysis and Brine with-out the need to eat ich. Based off several other responses from from post, I feel confident I made the right choice.

My regal tang gets ich every now and then so my cleaner eats the ich off of him as well as he constantly is picking at all the other fish in the tank. My cleaner wrasse also eats PE mysis and nori.

Cleaner wrasse DO get ich. Mine has had it and used to flash on the sides of my Niger Trigger...must have been like sand paper :D

I agree to a point. But unfortunately most people who argue these ethical points are just way too hypocritical. If you have a tank, you have contributed to a reefs destruction in some way. You have fish in an unnatural environment.

I am all for ethical fish/coral collection and argue it here all the time. I wish more could be done to make certain species less likely to die suddenly in our tanks because they were caught by poison. But in the end, if I really cared as much as I often think I do, I would have given this hobby up so long ago. The day I realized what this hobby does to the reefs around the world should have been enough to discourage me from buying ANY fish or coral. But it hasn't.

Apparently I am selfish enough to continue.

Personally I care a heck of a lot more about how fish are caught but don't feel any species should NOT be caught or kept other than threatened or endangered fish. It just starts to get way too hypocritical when you start to argue what fish should and shouldn't be kept.

A healthy 4" cleaner wrasse in a 180G tank may not have its natural diet but in that same tank a 16" Naso Tang has even less space in comparison. How can you argue that the cleaner wrasse should not be kept in the tank unless you also argue that Naso shouldn't be kept in the tank? Either way its less than ideal yet people will say the cleaner wrasse is unethical :lol:

Well put! I agree 100%. None of us are saints and obviously we share the guilt yet cannot quit this hobby.

I also wonder how you can even ENJOY being a member here Naesco when nearly everything I read by you has this same flavor. That's not a personal attack but seriously what motivates you to police the forums in this way? There's nothing ethical about you keeping a tank whatsoever. There may be different shades of ethical but we're all guilty to some degree.

The motivation is very simple and I don"t look at it as policing the forum.
Many newbies make a purchase of an unsuitable species and post, which post is followed by congratulatory posts and posts for other newbies desiring the same species.

By entering a thread such as this, I have the opportunity of putting forth the opinion of experts like Scott Michael and Robert Fenner.
Some readers get ****ed off because they are going to do what they want to do anyway.
Others are going to re think their purchase and that is the reason I post.