Sigh...I have seen this look before

[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.

[my2rotties]

Since I am a newbie at the hobby, I had no idea that cyanide caught fish die months down the road. I know cyanide kills many that are cuaght as well as other marine life, but knowing this is depressing. When our new fish are settled into their new lives, they just die.

It is sad on a couple of levels... These poor fish survive being caught and shipped, have to adjust to prepared foods, a store and then its new home. The little guy is finally doing well and they die because of how they are caught.

Then there is the hobbist whom buys these fish, watches them with pride everyday, only to lose the poor thing... Money is an issue, but I HATE losing fish since they are my pets. The first few weeks are always tense but then I never really worry beyond that. I just finished adding all my livestock, only one is questionable in surviving since she won't eat, but everyone else is loving life. The Naso that I am worried about could have been exchanged for another fish, but I can't do that to her... Bringing her back would certainly kill her at this point. Now if I get through this with her, I can't feel safe for a very long time. At least I know about this now, since a fish up and dying is a personal failure to me.

I can see fish catchers (don't know what they are called) using cyanide in their best interest in knowing they will die down the road. This keeps money in their wallets, since the supply and demand will always be there. I would most certainly pay twice as much for a fish, naturally caught any day. However I would be pretty ticked off if the fish died six months down the road anyways for no real reason.

Thanks to greenspottedpuffer for posting about this, since I had no idea...

[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.

[GreenSpottedPuffer]

Not trying to put the hobby down or anything but makes me wonder if I would have ever got into marine fishkeeping if I knew how many fish died for me to have just one specimen or how badly the reefs are destroyed for my pleasure...

I may have stayed freshwater. Its very discouraging.