Cleaner Wrasse? - Update

[reeferaddict]

Here is scientific...

Abstract The ecological significance of cleaner fish on coral reefs was
investigated. I removed all cleaner fish, Labroides dimidiatus, from eight
small reefs, measured the subsequent effect on the abundance and species
composition of all reef fish after 3 and 6 months, and compared it with
eight control reefs with cleaner fish. The removal of cleaner fish had no
detectable effect on the total abundance of fish on reefs and the total
number of fish species at both times. Multivariate analysis by non-metric
multidimensional scaling and ANOSIM pair wise tests based on 191 fish species
revealed no effect of cleaners on the community structure of fish. Similar
results were obtained using principal components analysis on subsets of the
data using the 33 most common fish species and the 15 most abundant species
(\geq5 individuals per reef ) with both log10 (x + 1) transformed data and
with fish numbers standardized for abundance. This study demonstrates that
the removal of cleaner fish for 6 months did not result in fish suffering
increased mortality nor in fish leaving reefs to seek cleaning elsewhere.

This is quoted right from your link. Please submit another quote you can find to the contrary.

Now how about economics? Before I purchased mine I asked about mortality. Of the 3 LFS I polled, all said pretty much the same thing. If only 10 or 15 out of a hundred shipped survived, they couldn't afford to sell them, and certainly not at $10 - $20.

Most suppliers are regulated by import/export regulations that have ecological impact requirements attached. I also noted that the writings that were referenced in the bibliography at the end of the article were at latest 1996 with some references going back to 1973. Anybody remember keeping SW fish in the 80's? A lot has changed since then, certainly our understanding of nature at least.

Please keep on this debate. It's healthy for everyone to voice their views, as the more we do, the sooner we can put this to rest one way or the other. Besides, I like a challenge.