[Myka]

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!