Captive bred fish: Please Respond

[Cthulhu]

Al my seahorses will definitely be captive bred, even if it should cost 2 or 3 times the price. For the ethic, and also becaue CB seahorses are much more easier to keep than wild caught ones.
For other fish, the only choice is usually only WC, except for the more common species like clowns. I dont think I'll be able to find CB scissortail gobies, but if I do I'll choose CB for sure.

[DJ88]

I would pay more..

I have already looked into getting captive rasied. Trying to get a LFS to bring them in is difficult tho. Due to costs. Most people out there other than the more enlightened ;) won't pay top dollars for a captive rasied fish. Too cheap. and really don't care if it is taken from the wild.

[ron101]

Considering we shell out 1000's on lighting, a large portion of which has to be replaced every 1-2 years I think paying 2-3 times more for captive bred fish is not out of the question.

Factor in that a healthy marine fish will outlive the average MH bulb by several times I think they are a relative bargain.

Another thing to consider is the losses associated with wild (aka drug) caught fish. These losses could potentially be drastically reduced. No more having to go through 2 or 3 fish in order to get a healthy one.

In short, I would definitely pay more for captive bred.

Ron

[Bob I]

Big Al's here in Calgary sells tank bred in Edmonton Ocellaris Clowns, as do Pisces. They are about the same price as wild caught. I had two, and found them to be the dumbest things on earth. They had no personality at all. My wild caught ones have lots of personality. All the captive bred ones learned to do was jump out of the tank.

Big Al's also sell tank raised Maroons and Tomatoes.

[Doug]

Then the other thing is, how do we know its actually tank bred fish were purchasing? Besides of course buying from a dealer like Inland Aquatics, which we cant do anyways.

For us here in Canada, we must rely on our lfs to bring them in.

[StirCrazy]

Hey Troy, I would be very interested in a actualy cost breakdown to raise say 10 fish to sale size from Andrew. I know there are expensed like salt for water and another filter and such, but that is all one time purchases (aside from the salt and food) so the problem is how do we factor that cost into the price of a fish. If you spend 300.00 on equipment for a grow out tank, then sell 10 fish you have to ask 30.00/fish to recover your cost but if you sell 1000 fish then it only costs 0.30/fish..

but ya it would be interesting to get some accurat costs (not including the equipment) on raising say 10 fish. the reason I say not including equipment is that is a start up cost and while it will be factored into the final sale price it is not a direct cost. what I am looking at is cost of food, salt, power, ect...


Steve

[Cthulhu]

raising fish can also be time consuming. Some of the things, like culturing artemia, may not be a lot of fun, so the time too has to be paid for.

In some years, when I get more experience with seahorses (I dont even have them yet.. still 3 weeks before they arive!), I'll try breeding them.

There are lots of advantages to having CB seahorses rather than WC. They are much more resistant to siseases, and they dont come in with diseases, like WC can. It must be the same thing with other fishes..

Do you really see a difference in behavior, like Bob said, that CB lack personnality?

[Delphinus]

Personality, hmmm.

My two A. ocellaris are captive-bred. One is about 4, 5 years old and the other about 2. They are a mated pair. I never really felt that they lacked personality, until I put a ritteri into their tank. They now never leave their anemone home. So to be fair, they might still have personality but I never see them except when they dart out to catch a piece of food. The rest of the time, they are just having sex and breeding like rabbits. Yeah, it's cool, but it's not interesting to look at (there is nothing to look at. They literally are completely buried in the anemone, you can't see them at all. The anemone's interesting to look at, but the fish aren't because they're invisible. Is this making any sense? I dunno..)

My yellow tang, OTOH, which of course is wild-caught, has more than enough personality for my liking. That is, if "personality," is of course defined as "the urge to eat and eat and eat and eat eat eat. I must eat! Did I mention I must eat? DON'T FEED THAT CORAL, FEED ME! ME! ME! ME! ME!" You get the idea. It gets a little tiresome sometimes actually, that I can never feed any corals in that tank because the tang, or the shrimp, steal anything and everything. Ok, to be fair, the fish isn't as bad as the shrimp, which can be loathesome little theives sometimes. (They don't even eat the stuff they steal. It's enough satisfaction to them, just to ensure that nothing else in the tank can eat. "Oh shoot, that open brain is about to swallow a teeney tiny morsel. I MUST DO EVERYTHING IN MY POWER TO PREVENT THIS." Stupid shrimp. Personality or no, leave my corals alone! Ok, I take that back. They're pretty to look at, they breed and provide a planktonic food source, but man, are they ever annoying little theives some days...)

Doug: I've heard conflicting rumours about C-Quest too. The thing that has me convinced, is this. There used to be a website for them, www.c-quest.com I think. That site no longer exists, but the domain was taken over by some other company. To me, that cinches it. It means they are either gone for good, or the rebuilding process has set them back so far that it wasn't ecomonically feasible to continue to pay to advertise their existence in the meantime, which is an unusual tactic for a business (it basically means they're out of business). Who knows, maybe there are other factors involved too. I thought the guy who was running it was doing so as a hobby business so-to-speak, after he had retired from his "real" vocation. Perhaps it was too much work, and he decided simply to enjoy his retirement without worrying trying to keep a barely-viable business afloat.

Starting to see some comments that to me, give credibility to my idea of artificially inflating the cost of wild-caught. If wild-caught costs $10 each, and captive bred costs $20, of course, people will gravitate towards the wild-caught. If, however, the cost of wild-caught was made to be, say $30, suddenly that $20 doesn't look so bad anymore. I think there are valid cases where wild-caught should be an option, for example, a breeder who needs genetic diversity, or perhaps a specialized hobbyist or something like that, but in those cases those people are probably willing to pay a tiny little bit extra anyways. For the mass-consumption market, captive-bred should be more than adequate. I think, anyways...

[ 21 June 2002, 09:25: Message edited by: delphinus ]

[SuperFudge]

Steve,

Costs are Prohibitive for anything beyond our systems and not even comparable to fry born and reared in our home tanks.

A couple of years ago,I purchased the equipment to do so for a small 500 gallon operation.(my intended start up size).

After research on my own,aswell as working with N.R.C (national research council),it was clear to both of us that after labour,maintanence costs, shipping, losses, possible markets (NRC`s end) and a net profit,it just wasnt possible....with an anuall profit of $6100 per 500 gal.(average)

You could say,well,we could have 5000 gals then.
This would be beyond (our) market potential by far,as compared to our American neighbors and relating to the numbers and species that can be sucsessfully reared reliably.

The next consideration instead,was raising W/C juviniles to marketable size, this wouldve increased variety aswell as possible markets.
After headed in this direction for a while I also declined,per gallon profit is decreased with variety as they need more space for more species.
Considerable losses with the purchase of juveniles aswell coupled with the costs of importing them remained the same.

Then it just became an ethical issue for me... again,what/who was i benifitting ?
As i would still be collecting wild caught,with only a slightly higher sucsess rate than an LFS.

In the end,i will leave it up to home scale guys Such as andrew,and to our neighbors,as Troy`s link points to,and support them fully.

Marc.

[ 23 June 2002, 19:54: Message edited by: Superfudge ]

[BC_Grl]

Yes, I may be ignorant about these matters, but... I'd go for the cheepest. To me, I don't care if it is wild-caught or not. As long as it is healthy and happy, that is all I care about. If I wasn't getting a 'superior' animal, I would only spend the extra money if I wanted to help a breeder-friend out.
That is my 2¢ worth. Sorry!