Captive bred fish: Please Respond

[Troy F]

Posted by Andrew: If my captive raised Bangaiis were being sold for twice the price of wild caughts, why would anyone (except for ethical type reasons) buy the more expensive ones?

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I think you pretty much answer the question in your question; for ethical reasons. You (figuratively) may also want to surmise that by buying captive bred fish and corals, you promote those businesses to carry on with their work. If those businesses are unsuccessful there may not be a hobby in the not to distant future.

The fish available at this time are pretty limited and in the case of the dottybacks, don't do much for a community tank (for the most part). However, everyone has clowns and most people have some form or another of goby genuses. There in lies the reason I posted this thread. I'm curious if you as hobbyists would look at captive bred specimens at an inflated price for the eithical reasons.

Tony, you make a great point about inflating the price of wild caught in order to subsidize the captive bred fish. I love that idea. A hefty tax wouldn't be anything new to a Canadian government.

[StirCrazy]

let me pose another question, why do "captive raised" fish have to be more expensive that "wild caught" in most cases they are local so there is next to no shipping charge (which is about 50% or more of the cost of most imported fish) also they are supposed to be more hardy.. Meaning that there should be less die off (another reason the lfs doesn’t have to charge as much)

There is no reason that a store can't sell stuff like this for the same price or even cheaper than wild caught except for greed itself. They see an angle that they can push it as superior than a wild caught and mark the price higher, saying that you are more responsible if you buy this local raised fish.

I have a friend that breads angelfish herein town and he gets 1.00/fish. The stores he sells to mark them up to usably 6.00 to 8.00 each where wild ones are 12.00 to 14.00.
Now I know that the average angel spawn is larger than a cardinal spawn but not that much... maby 4 times the numbers. So even if you sell a fish for 10.00 there is no reason the LFS should only mark it up to 20.00 and promote locally raised fish. Instead they crank it higher than wild caught and hinder its acceptance.

I consider myself more ethical and anal than most when it comes to providing for my fish and even I would not pay an inflated price for local raised fish... Hmm I think 10% more would be my limit and that would be pushing it.

I don't know maby my thinking is backwards bbut if we were honest and charged acordingly woulden't that encourage more people to buy localy raised fish?

just a though

Steve

[Troy F]

Steve, you are way off. The cost of raising captive bred fish is a lot more than bringing in wild caught. Have a look at the facilities that they have to keep up. Think about how much money you have in your tank, then think bigger, granted they aren't running the lighting that we are for a reef but you get the idea. Ask Andrew what he'd charge for his cardinals if he had to actually cover costs.

This isn't freshwater so the comparisons don't really hold true.

You may be willing to pay 10% more now but in a couple of years or so you'll be paying more than that. Fish may be safe a while longer but corals won't be available too much longer. That is my prediction.

[BCReefer]

In my tank the fish are a big part of tank but I am limited to a small quantity so now I am more than willing to pay twice the rate of wild caught.

When my tank gets bigger I will still be willing to pay more but I will have to stock slower. To be a true to the hobby we should do as much as possible in conservation. I don't mean that every single item in the tank needs to 100% captaive bread, but we can at least try.

My 0.03 worth!
Patrick

[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!