cleaner wrasse

[justinl]

Laurie, yup, absolutely, I agree that anecdotal information is important. I'm just voicing my opinion as well; I did not mean to discredit anyone's experience. Maybe I'm biased towards wild fish just because that's what I study and plan to be my career (marine fish biology), but looking at things in a broader perspective, I can't say I agree with the importance of fish in a tank.

For argument's sake, let us imagine what would happen if cleaner wrasses went extinct or declined to the point where their function as a cleaner fish was rendered nonfunctional. Parasitic copepod and isopod events could go up exponentially (or maybe not at all... i hope we don't have to find out) leading to shortened lifespan of animals. Greater occurences of the same parasites as these adult fish are brought into our hobby. Increased natural mortality of adult fish, perhaps pushing the less disease resistant species from their precarious hold onto the endangered list and out into the abyss of the extinct list. Are you familiar with the current farmed salmon parasitic copepod issue? Perhaps there will be so damn many parasites, that they will occur in fatal density on juvenile fish; juveniles are less resistant to parasites so mortality will increase before they even mature and contribute to future stock. Such mortality might decrease fish populations inciting an allee effect, in which a species' population is brought to such low levels that they are doomed to spiral into extinction due to low genetic diversity, such low densities that they can't find each other to mate etc. And finally, as more and more fish go extinct or become endangered because we decided cleaner wrasses could be exterminated from the reefs, said fish will become unavailable to the trade. Politicians and scientists will rage on the hobby until it is choked by restrictions until it finally dies out. As you can (hopefully) see, we CANNOT pretend that we are a separate body from wild stock of fish. like it or not, you are very close to wild fish.

let us set emotions and attachments to our fish aside. After all they're really just artifacts of human nature and have no real meaning in the long run... well, except negative effects. I mean, if we had never evolved beyond the "ape" status, the world would be much better off. But I digress. Sans emotions, let us be mechanically logical and look at numbers. Okay, how many fish do you have in your tank besides you cleaner wrasse? Ten? Alright so let us assume the wrasse treats them all. Now conversely, how many fish could the same wrasse have cleaned in the wild? Hundreds, maybe thousands in its lifetime! That's a lot of happy fish. Why should your fish (who will not contribute one iota to future stock and in the long run means nothing at all), be any more important than wild fish? Like it or not, they're less important. I don't mean to be abrasive, but I can't say I care what your heart says; use your brain.

Another thing I have to bring up is image. Image is everything these days. When aquarists say things like "my fish are more important than wild stocks", first I get depressed at the lack of perspective. Then I get angry and frightened because it is exactly this that will shut down our hobby, ruin wild stocks of fish and just basically make us all have a really bad day. All your non-reefer friends will see this attitude and they'll assume we all feel that way; the danger here is that the non-reefers are in power. The non-reefers outnumber us and they will be the ones to pass judgement on us according to what image we present them. Why do you think there is such a big push for aquaculture in our hobby? Why do you think we frown so much on noobs who make impulse buys and/or don't do their homework properly? Because a lot of us realize that this hobby we love so has such significant effects in the wild... and if we continue doing the same as we are now, we will be shut down one way or another. Whether by extinctions of animals or death by legislation is irrelevant; it's just a matter of time unless we change.

hmm... this thread is rapidly veering off-topic. oh wellz.