Quote:
Originally Posted by intarsiabox
You can walk into just about any salt water fish store and buy all the frags and captive bred clownfish you want right now. So stores are already doing something to "make a difference". It's not that stores don't want to sell lots of captive bred fish (cheaper if done on a large scale)its that they can't get them to breed in captivity(people are working on this daily). Rare fish and corals aren't usually rare because there's none to be found in the ocean, it's because they are usually deep water species so most of the collectors who only have access to snorkels and hold their breathe can't reach them. You need a trained deep water scuba diver to collect them and that won't be cheap so there is little market demand, hence rare. Most people on this board buy/trade/sell among each other so every time that happens people are doing something to save a reef. If you own a salt water fish tank then you are directly responsible for reef destruction. Even if you are sure none of your livestock or rock came from the ocean you have still put money into and supported the industry responsible. If people are actually serious about supporting the reefs they would sell every fish related item they had and get out of the hobby forever. Easy to say, hard to do. No different than driving a car instead of an SUV, you are still supporting the oil companies, haven't had to make any personal sacrifice but get to feel better of yourself and less of others. I guess the question is how big of a commitment is one willing to make to save a reef, a little one, a large one, total? I have captive bred fish and coral frags from others, does that make me more enviromentally friendly than other reef keepers? I think not.
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+1
If any of us would really want to make a difference we would shut down our tanks. Any fish that we buy in LFS is considered dead sooner or later it will be dead anyway for whatever reason. If the fish is out of the ocean does it matter how many years it will live after that? It will not be able to be as happy in our tank as it could have been in the ocean.