i'm just curious if ever the fish trade will be solely supported by people like us or fish farms.
Probably not, for reasons including those mentioned above. For myself, I prefer to keep (and breed, if I can) the more unusual fish, and these simply aren't available as captive bred livestock.
now i know majority of fish in the trade come from farms, but i feel really mean when i see "wild caught" next to a fish in a tank at the lfs.
On the freshwater side of the hobby, by far the majority of stock is captive-bred; probably something like 95+ percent. This is because the vast bulk of expenditure is on mass-produced, low-value fish: goldfish, neons, guppies, and so on that are produced to a price that people are willing to pay.
i don't think its morally right to go around picking up animals whether it be dogs, cats, bird or fish from the wild and then put it in a tiny enclosure to what its used too.
This can be argued both ways. It is admittedly true that keeping a fish in an unreasonably small enclosure without proper outlets for its normal social behaviours is unfair.
But most cruelty of this type is done with farmed fish: goldfish for example, which are routinely kept in tanks that are much too small, or singly, so that their natural schooling instinct is denied. Likewise neons kept in groups of less than ten, bettas kept in jars,
Corydoras kept singly, and so on. Just because they were bred doesn't mean their natural behaviours have been reduced any. My ancestors left the plains of Africa some half-million years ago, but my body requires exactly the same amount of exercise, food, and warmth now as then.
Furthermore, I'd argue in some cases
captive-breeding has introduced a level of cruelty that doesn't exist where wild-caught fish are concerned. Fancy bettas with their long fins can barely swim compared to their wild ancestors, effectively crippling them just so they look pretty to the eyes of some aquarists. Likewise goldfish with fancy fins, bubble eyes, distorted bodies and so on are all weaker than their standard goldfish are more prone to health problems such as finrot (under icy conditions) and swim bladder disorders (if they don't eat enough fibre). Fancy guppies are demonstrably less hardy than wild guppies, lab work clearly showing they've lost the ability to adapt to living in seawater, indicating weaker physiological systems; interestingly, feeder guppies adapt to seawater just fine, demonstrating there's a genetic component here that's remedied when the guppies are not selectively bred for colours or longer fins. Albino
Corydoras are likely to be more prone to blindness, "butterfly" discus don't have tail fins, parrot cichlids have deformed backs, and so on. There are plenty of examples of tank-bred fish that live poorer lives than the wild-caught equivalents just because breeders have focused on some superficial trait rather than their overall hardiness or strength.
I hope that all people on this forum should say NO wild caught fish and not purchase them.
I would agree that people should purchase fish that they can properly house and look after. Whether they are wild-caught or tank-bred is really not an issue in my opinion, unless a given wild-caught species simply cannot be maintained in captivity. The classic example would be a marine fish called a blue ribbon eel. It's mortality rate in captivity has been estimated by Bob Fenner to be over 90% within the first month!
On the other hand, trade in wild-caught fish can have strong positive benefits, if properly regulated. Wild-caught fish can ear hard currency for people living in the tropics, and if that fishery is to survive in the long term, local people have a vested interest in keeping their river or coastline healthy. In a few cases, overfishing for the aquarium trade may be a major pressure on wild populations -- the most hotly debated example of this at the moment is probably the Banggai cardinalfish -- but for the most part collecting live fish is a trivial issue next to climate change, commercial (food) fishing, trawling, dam building, hydroelectric plants, logging, urban development, and so on. Finally, there are notable cases where fish kept as pets are the only examples of their species alive today; for a variety of reasons, though never collecting for the ornamental fish trade, some species have gone extinct in the wild. The famous example is the red-tailed black shark.
this is me just being a bit hippy but i feel strongly about it.
Nothing wrong with being "green", but it is always important to put gut feelings into their full scientific context. In this case, the issues of whether a fish is wild-caught or captive-bred is not really relevant either way. What does matter is people buy fish from responsible collectors (e.g., not from Southeast Asian coral reef divers in countries where cyanide is used); that they research the needs of a fish prior to purchase; that they don't buy hybrids; and that they don't release unwanted fish into the wild.
Cheers, Neale
