LFS claimed wild caught fishes are better
 

Well reefers from Calgary must know about Gold's aquarium since they always carry the best deals in down in both livestock and equipment. The other day I was asking the owner which fishes are captive bred, he said that he stopped keeping captive bred since wild ones are more resistant to diseases and are much more colorful. He even gave the technical reasoning for claiming that wild ones are more resistant to diseases because the captive bred are all coming from (more or less) a single generation and hence they are more pron to diseases (its like keeping on taking the same medication over and over again and that person' generation will slowly develop resistant to the medicine and thus the medicine will not work and hence the disease can take over).

I got really confused because I thought captive bred are more resistant to "aquarium" diseases. His logic seems reasonable to me too.

What do you people think?

I can't speak to the current situation with captive breeding as I have no first hand experience. In the long term I would think that proper selective breeding should be able to produce fish that are both as beautiful as any wild specimen as well as hardier in a captive environment.

That's what I think too but that claim got me thinking. Apart from the ethical issue, the rest of the claims seem valid.

Would love to get more opinions. Because that store sells livestock for dead cheap!

Curious. I purchased a tank bred fish there five weeks ago.

Wild caught are cheaper, so likely more profit....

I think tank bred are way too hardy.

Just to do "kind of" an experiment, I added a captive bred clownfish on the very day when I received my cured live rock (no fish police I hope :P). And guess what? It is still kicking and way too playful (tank's running more than a month now). Then I got a wild one few weeks after adding the first one, and suddenly it stopped eating, mouths were stuck open and I knew it would get ich very soon and I was true and had to put it out of its misery.

This caused me to be curious since my situation is either caused by the fish being wild or the fish being sick initially!

Extremely cheap! CB clownfishes go around for like $30 while wild ones are llike $15! Tempting but still I don't want to get wild ones unless I am sure that they are actually better than CB.

Golds takes care of all the fishes in the store. You'll almost never see a died fish. Also they make sure they qt the fish until it looks healthy.
I'm not to sure who you where talking to but they have all been into salt/fresh water for many years. with Dave, Doug, Kevin and Ollie. That's a lot of experiance.
There is a lot of talk about captive bred and wild but I have yet to see a captive bred tang, trigger, etc.. Not saying it can't be done. Clowns sure why not.

I like when you have a question they well anwser it to the best of thier knownledge.

Almost all my fish are from golds or red coral that I have bought from stores.

If you qt any wild fish you should have a problem.
Cb fish have already been qt.

Yah gold's does have a very good rep and that's why I think there's something reasonable for not selling captive bred.

About the dead fish in the tank, I actually saw quite a few dead fishes in few of my visits over there :P

I think the idea of cb being less disease resistent. Is because they have never been exposed to disease or parasites. Their immune system hasn't ever had to fight off anything. They have no antibodies or resistance. Like when we get vacinated we are being exposed to a virus for our immune system to build antibodies.

i think damsels in particular do better in the cycle process than most other fish and are very hardy:P

+1

plus wild caught fish are street smart:P

Haha. I know but I just didn't want to go through the trouble of removing the damsel afterwards.

But I was pretty surprised because the clown went through my cycle without any problem. From the very first day, it was eating like pig and from the 2nd take it started taking food from my hand. It was awesome :D

So you think wild caught are better to get? (Will save me lots of money :D)

clownfish are part of the damsel family:P

no i dont think they are better, but finding them reguarily and then proving they are tank bred is another story. most of the fish stores around here have wild caught fish, the odd tank bred fish that comes through are mostly clowns and bangers.

Oh yes I forgot :redface:

I think Gold's meant well in their opinion, but may have been narrow in perspective.

Keep in mind, by the time that a wild caught fish has reached the store, the greater proportion of fish that died along the way are not offered for sale. Numerous were caught and held prior to consolidating to a local exporting shipper, then numerous die in that transit, then some die post arrival to a wholesaler in Canada or US, then some make it to our LFS. In contrast, captive bred have higher survival rates come straight from the farm to the north american wholesaler/LFS. By the time a wild caught is offered side by side with a captive bred, you're looking at one heck of a fighter in the wild fish. Physiologically they are comparable but costs of an aquaculture operation is going to require higher prices.

The questions is not whether you want captive bred for hardiness... the difference is likely not statistically significant if you ran 100 trials against common aquarium diseases. The question will be simply your choice. It's a purchase preference in ethics, not in utility. No right or wrong either way, fisheries exist to provide for society, we're just not eating these fish. They're not on the endangered list.

+1 i was goingto comment the same. who knows how many fish are lost in transit i try to purchase aquacultured if i can find its origin but yet if i wish a certian fish/critter not bred in captivity am i going to pass it up possibly not. but for the most part i prefer captive bred

I too prefer CB fish whenever I can find them, and I completely understand in-breeding problems
I am guilty of buying fish when I see them as they are only available as WC
Then I have to try to feed them ....

I disagree with the thoughts of CB fish being more susceptible to diseases, or WC fish being more immune

It's all about our husbandry

Yah. I would also prefer to get captive bred but upon no other option, the wild got surplus for our hobby :P

my husbandry sucks if i was a good husband id be in bed with my wife instead of up watching movies and lurking canreef just sayin..

ontopic .. do as you wish and that which you are comfortable with. everyone has an opinion one way or the other. the fact we take these creatures from an ocean and into our tiny tanks in itself is wrong. but it is wha it is. and has been since before i was born

Everything has good sides and bad sides :D

Yup, me too

Later ...

Now a lot of my fish (all my clowns for example) are captive bred and others are "ethically" net caught (most of my fish from Island Pets' Vanuatu suppliers). Currently I am raising 8 Bangaii babies (largest is 2cm+ including tail) so I hope to contribute to the pool of CB fish in the future, especially fish that can easily be overfished like the Bangaiis. And yes, it is a lot of work, time and hassle to raise the live food every day and try to convert the babies over to frozen or eventually to pellets.

Around here, CB clowns are often a little bit more expensive than WC, but Bangaiis are the same price for CB and WC, which I don't understand. There is a premium on CB clowns, especially the morphs, but no premium for Bangaiis. Hard to encourage more hobbyist breeders of Bangaiis if all they are paid is $12.50 or less per fish at the LFS and the broods are small and take months to raise on live food. Financially, not worth it. BUT baby Bangaiis are sooooooo cute. I will probably end up keeping most of this first batch just because the offspring are worth more to me than $12.50 at the LFS. Yes, privately can sell Bangaiis for $20-25 (one or two at a time) but for larger scale breeding, selling to LFS makes more sense.

From my own experience with clowns, at least with Ocellaris species, the CB are waaaaay hardier than the WC. I currently own 6 CB Oc., 2 CB True Percs, and 2 CB Black Oc. (all bred locally by Timbits - a Canreef member).

I do not oppose tank bred at all, but the wild caught would be less susceptible to inbreeding.

Tank bred has come a long way, but consider all the designer clowns. It's not natural. May look cool but it's s defect to me. I have no interest in owning them. To me it's a fish with imperfections.

My clowns are wild caught. Beautiful. Perfect. Healthy.

But again, it's an argument I have no scientific backing for.

Wild caught hurts the reefs over all. So personally I'm torn on the issue.

I can attest to the pro's and con's of CB fish.

As a store that tries to get as much CB fish in the store, there are a few factors that we have to consider. We deal with the likes of ORA and such, and have our own local breeding facility for a few species of clownfish, gobies, and seahorses


These are some of the things we have come accoss.
-CB fish are more expensive than wild caught
-CB take a lot of time and work to get to sellable size.
-CB are used to man made water
-CB seem to see less disease, but that could be due to the lack of pathogens in our water, doesn't prover they are more or less immune.

WC are cheaper, but mortality rates are lower
WC have more selection, and there are not as much selection of CB fish.

Mortality rates are lower in WC?:neutral:

packaging, shipping times, etc.

especially stress.

from shipper to retail mortality rates are lower, if you buy from a fish farm (ORA) much higher.

That's a +1 for buying WC :P

I had never really thought about the mortality rates before. Of the six CB fish I have purchased, three have died. Of the four WC fish I have purchased, none have died. While I tend to prefer to purchase CB fish, my wallet is now suggesting otherwise.

I bought one CB and one WC clownfish and the WC died. I guess I got a bad fish or something.

But yes wallet do suggest to get WC. After all, wallets are unethical :P

CB clowns are much more hardy to our aquariums. Now putting a CB clown back into the wild... probably not the best idea but I dont think too many people in Canada will be doing this :P

WC often come in with diseases.

That being said the store owner was correct with respect to SOME of the CB clowns. Clowns are currently being bead just about everywhere; sri lanka isreal, Indo, USA, canada etc.
Typically the ones from overseas are WAY cheaper but their color is also VERY poor and they dont seem to be very hardy at all.
The orange in these clowns is more of a yellow.
The white is drab and the black is almost non existent.

I would guess that his experiences with respect to CB clowns is based on the ones ordered from overseas, in which case he is absolutely correct.
But good quality clowns from just about anywhere in North America are WAY better than wilds IMO.

Psuedochromis fridmani aka Orchid Dottyback is often bred in captivity and makes a great addition to most tanks.

Here is my CB dotty:

http://snaz.com/marine/dotty4.jpg

I've lost two CB occ. clowns. But, here are the two who remain . . .

http://i1035.photobucket.com/albums/...r/IMG_2059.jpg

The gorgeous orange one is from a breeder here in Calgary, and was purchased by me at Red Coral. I don't know who the breeder is (the breeder sold to Red Coral and not to me) but his colours are amazing. He looks a bit like he's had some black airbrushed along his spine.

I did notice washed out CB clowns at Piscies the other day. They did look very yellow. They were no where near as nice as our little Nemo, and I figured they all had to be sick with something.

I don't know where the black occ. was bred, but it is a very nice specimen, too.

^ Those are some really nice CB! I never saw a CB clown with that bright color. Not only pisces but Big Al's CBs are also on the yellow side instead of being red.

BTW how's the price tag in Red coral? Never been there since I am more into Big Al's since they are more reasonably priced compared to Pisces.

I paid $15 for him, as he was tiny at the time. They had some Vancouver bred ones that were a smidge bigger than this guy and his siblings, and they were the same price. The Vancouver ones were very nice, too.

His colour has become more vibrant as he's aged. He didn't look like that in the store. He's still quite little maybe around 1.5" . . . He's almost doubled in size since I got him. I did lose another one that I bought at the same time, from the same batch.

GREAT! I am going to Red Coral once I come back from my home country to get my other stockings :D

Hope they open up by then.

Lovely. Have you noticed any obvious visual differences between the CB and the WC?