Sigh...I have seen this look before

[naesco]

I too have tried them without success and will not try them again.
I think that the problem with them is collecting shipping and feeding.

Cyanide is used to catch fish that are hiding in the coral. For example all cryptic wrasse like 6 lines and leopards are cyanide caught because they are so difficult to get out of the coral rock. It is best to avoid them because we know they are cyanide caught.

Mandarins are the same except that some fishers are using a stick with a prong on it to catch them successfully.

[naesco]

This is an excellent thread because the posters are being candid about their experience. Many have tried several times.

Too often, like the recent posting on wrasse, the only reefers who comment on the post are the rare reefers that have success (for example with leopard wrasse.
I have not been successful and have tried a couple of times and the authors warn that these fish are difficult to keep alive.

We should try to post our own bad experience with very difficult fish as newbies are left with the wrong impression.

[untamed]

My record with fish (in general) over the past 15+ years has actually been pretty good. However, I failed in my one attempt to keep a Copperband. Mine refused to eat anything except mysis and just starved to death in about two weeks. This is not a fish I would recommend to anyone.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Originally Posted by naesco

This is an excellent thread because the posters are being candid about their experience. Many have tried several times.

Too often, like the recent posting on wrasse, the only reefers who comment on the post are the rare reefers that have success (for example with leopard wrasse.
I have not been successful and have tried a couple of times and the authors warn that these fish are difficult to keep alive.

We should try to post our own bad experience with very difficult fish as newbies are left with the wrong impression.

You are right on about posting bad experiences as well as good. People are being candid here and admitting they have tried several and failed.

To me the frustrating thing is that often times even once you get them eating, they die.

Unfortunately there is no way for us or LFS to know if they are cyanide caught until after death. Degeneration of the liver is the biggest problem. One of the reasons they may also be such picky eaters is that cyanide will kill off their gut flora which is harmed by contact with the chemical. From what I have read, this is irreversible.

Steve Robinson has been talking about cyanide caught fish for a few years now at MACNA and claims 2/3 of all marine tropical fish come from the Philippines and 3/4 of them are cyanide caught. Sodium cyanide tablets are apparently so easy to get now in some areas that its become easy for even collectors who in the past used nets because they had no access to cyanide. Now they simply crush the tablets into the water bottle and squirt the poison into coral heads or literally right into the fishes face. Respiratory is effected first and the fish are stunned. Collect whatever lives and move on. The ones who survive a few weeks come here and often die in our tanks. Perhaps copperbands just do not handle the poison as well as some other species.

The other problem with cyanide caught fish is that their immune system and central nervous systems are shot by the time they get here. So even if they do survive years, they can be very disease prone.

Of course the biggest problem is this:

"A square metre of reef is destroyed for every live fish caught using cyanide," says biologist Sam Mamauag of the International Marinelife Alliance (IMA) in the Philippines.

Sad.