Quote:
Originally Posted by Myka
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! |
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.