Where dose it come from?

[CandyCane]

The veiw of "one person can't make a difference" really baffles me. Think of it like recycling. If one person never recycled anything their whole life you'd prob make a pile of garbage at least 50 feet tall! Consider recycleing now and that pile becomes way way smaller! If one person starts promoting in a lfs near them the selling of only farm bread marine creatures I think they could easily make a difference. If you hear a coral is "rare" maybe you shouldnt buy it, or cleaner wrasses, without them natural ocean reefs can't survive and they do horrible in our tanks anyways. Every little thing helps

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by CandyCane

If one person starts promoting in a lfs near them the selling of only farm bread marine creatures I think they could easily make a difference. If you hear a coral is "rare" maybe you shouldnt buy it, or cleaner wrasses, without them natural ocean reefs can't survive and they do horrible in our tanks anyways. Every little thing helps

You can walk into just about any salt water fish store and buy all the frags and captive bred clownfish you want right now. So stores are already doing something to "make a difference". It's not that stores don't want to sell lots of captive bred fish (cheaper if done on a large scale)its that they can't get them to breed in captivity(people are working on this daily). Rare fish and corals aren't usually rare because there's none to be found in the ocean, it's because they are usually deep water species so most of the collectors who only have access to snorkels and hold their breathe can't reach them. You need a trained deep water scuba diver to collect them and that won't be cheap so there is little market demand, hence rare. Most people on this board buy/trade/sell among each other so every time that happens people are doing something to save a reef. If you own a salt water fish tank then you are directly responsible for reef destruction. Even if you are sure none of your livestock or rock came from the ocean you have still put money into and supported the industry responsible. If people are actually serious about supporting the reefs they would sell every fish related item they had and get out of the hobby forever. Easy to say, hard to do. No different than driving a car instead of an SUV, you are still supporting the oil companies, haven't had to make any personal sacrifice but get to feel better of yourself and less of others. I guess the question is how big of a commitment is one willing to make to save a reef, a little one, a large one, total? I have captive bred fish and coral frags from others, does that make me more enviromentally friendly than other reef keepers? I think not.

[CandyCane]

okay sounds like you dont support someone putting effort in to saving reefs? Would you like us to all say sorry for trying?

[yellowworld]

From an ecological point of view we are all responsible for the destruction of the worlds reefs. From an ethical/moral point a view, those of us who take the effort to buy and source captive bred corals and fish or buying from other hobbyists are doing only slightly less damage then those of us who do not. But its a step in the right direction. Im not perfect I know that some of my coral is captive and some is not. However if you were to put two frags in front of me - one captive the other wild. I would take the captive, because it is now the 2nd or later generation of one wild harvested coral. With that in mind we now have to weigh the difference between wild reproduction witch is undoubtably - on a healthy reef, exponentially larger then we can achieve in our tanks, and fragging one wild coral over and over at a slower rate. Which do you place more priority on? Giving the reefs a chance to recover while fragging what we have or pulling more to furnish our tanks with. Fish are an entirely different story, until we can perfect captive breeding the ocean will have to do our work, we now need to keep our fatality rate to a minimum.

It is a fine line but one that we all must draw on our own moral code.

I would like to show my kids the beauty of a coral reef one day, that is not in my living room. If we are not carful that might not be a possibility 20 years from now.

[intarsiabox]

Originally Posted by CandyCane

okay sounds like you dont support someone putting effort in to saving reefs? Would you like us to all say sorry for trying?

Actually what I dont support is disillusioned people who own SW tanks and think they are doing the world a favor. If you actually want to support the wild reefs why do you have a fish tank at all. Do think its right to keep animals locked up in extremely tiny cages? The fact is if you have a SW fish tank then you dont support natural reefs. Why do you feel a need to keep a tank at all except for our own selfish reasons. Keeping a reef tank is the rquivilant to cutting down a few acres of rainforrest and then planting a tree at home to say that you are doing your part for the enviroment. Bottom line is, if you actually cared about wild reefs you wouldnt own a reef tank ever. We only keep them for our own selfishness. Knowone would have to try and captive breed anything if they just left everything in the wild to begin with.

[MarkoD]

honestly i think the impact of hobbyists is minimal on the ocean. no amount of fishing or fragging of while corals would even cause a dent in the population.

so if you're really concerned with saving the environment, stop driving, burping and farting

honestly, i think running metal halides probably has a bigger impact on ocean (in the long run) than harvesting fish and corals from the ocean

[CandyCane]

I dont run metal halides and if I'd known in the beginning that the majority of the critters are plucked out of the ocean I prob wouldt have started a reef tank. I have one now though so I plan on being as environmentaly aware of everthing I do with it as I can. So far every coral and the one fish I have I'm fairly sure by chance didnt come from the ocean and I plan to keep it that way.

[intarsiabox]

Ah, don't feel bad, Lisa. Everybodys doing it! Besides in 40 years we'll probably be heros because we saved a species residing in our tanks from extinction. I gotta tell ya it's also a lot more fun trading and buying among fellow reefers because you get to meet a lot of interesting people with lots of opinions!

[MarkoD]

Originally Posted by CandyCane

I dont run metal halides and if I'd known in the beginning that the majority of the critters are plucked out of the ocean I prob wouldt have started a reef tank. I have one now though so I plan on being as environmentaly aware of everthing I do with it as I can. So far every coral and the one fish I have I'm fairly sure by chance didnt come from the ocean and I plan to keep it that way.

are you gonna stop driving a car? are you gonna stop using lights in your house? are you gonna stop flushing the toilet?

all of these things have a far greater impact on the environment than taking fish or corals from the ocean.

ever heard "theres plenty of fish in the sea"... literally its true

your profile says you're a LFS manager..... how is your store suppose to make money if fish arent gonna be taken from their natural environment?

[RuGlu6]

Originally Posted by intarsiabox

You can walk into just about any salt water fish store and buy all the frags and captive bred clownfish you want right now. So stores are already doing something to "make a difference". It's not that stores don't want to sell lots of captive bred fish (cheaper if done on a large scale)its that they can't get them to breed in captivity(people are working on this daily). Rare fish and corals aren't usually rare because there's none to be found in the ocean, it's because they are usually deep water species so most of the collectors who only have access to snorkels and hold their breathe can't reach them. You need a trained deep water scuba diver to collect them and that won't be cheap so there is little market demand, hence rare. Most people on this board buy/trade/sell among each other so every time that happens people are doing something to save a reef. If you own a salt water fish tank then you are directly responsible for reef destruction. Even if you are sure none of your livestock or rock came from the ocean you have still put money into and supported the industry responsible. If people are actually serious about supporting the reefs they would sell every fish related item they had and get out of the hobby forever. Easy to say, hard to do. No different than driving a car instead of an SUV, you are still supporting the oil companies, haven't had to make any personal sacrifice but get to feel better of yourself and less of others. I guess the question is how big of a commitment is one willing to make to save a reef, a little one, a large one, total? I have captive bred fish and coral frags from others, does that make me more enviromentally friendly than other reef keepers? I think not.

+1
If any of us would really want to make a difference we would shut down our tanks. Any fish that we buy in LFS is considered dead sooner or later it will be dead anyway for whatever reason. If the fish is out of the ocean does it matter how many years it will live after that? It will not be able to be as happy in our tank as it could have been in the ocean.