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Old 07-24-2011, 04:32 AM
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I'm afraid if you're trying to avoid wild caught animals, this hobby will be ultimately disappointing.

There are very few species in the salt water hobby that are captive bred. As far as I know, not a single wrasse species is bred in captivity, nor are any of the tangs, or angelfish (though that might have changed recently). Really, the only animals that I know of that are reliably bred in captivity and available for sale are Bengali cardinals, clown fish, and (I think) some of the damsels.

Even captive breeding shrimp is hit and miss.

If you can find coral that you know is several generations in-tank, you're in luck there, but as far as anemones, unless it's a species that regularly propagates by splitting they're also probably all wild caught. I don't think anyone has ever bread an anemone (at least not the kinds we want in our tanks) via sexual reproduction in captivity.

I would say a good 80-90% of the fish and inverts you see in any given salt water specialty store came directly from the ocean. The longer the hobby is around, the more species we add to the captive bred list, but there are lots of species that will most likely never be successfully reared in tanks.

We can mitigate the collateral damage the hobby does by only purchasing fish from reliable vendors that were sourced from regions that we know to have 'responsible' collection methods, but there will always be a pretty high mortality rate associated with wild collection and transportation. I don't know how many fish die for each fish that ends up in someone's tank, but I bet that globally it's pretty high. The proportion of fish that successfully acclimate to home aquarium but also live out their full, natural life span will be even lower. And even if the fish does live for it's full, natural lifespan, it doesn't change the fact that every collected specimen is essentially 'dead' from a gene pool perspective.

Basically, there are ethical ramifications with keeping marine animals. Most everyone has had to come to terms with, and rationalize that to some extent to keep doing it.

In my opinion, eating tuna is as bad, or worse, than keeping a flashy hawaiian wrasse. The commercial fishing industry removes many millions more tons of animals from the ocean every year than the salt water aquarium trade ever will, and usually devastates entire ecosystems in the process. Most of us still eat seafood, and at least in this hobby the collectors (the responsible ones) have a vested interest in protecting the habitats their animals are harvested from.
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