Tempted By Marine, Moral Quandries.

[doktor doris]

this is in wrong place, sorry.
can a mod move it to reef chat? plz.



I love and am intrigued by fish, freshwater, marine, the lot!

My favourite place on earth isn't the pyramids, it's 'the deep' at Hull.
I have all the Blue planets on DVD.
And I would love to add a marine tank to my collection, I have a real thing for ****** trigefish and boxfish

But....

Can I, in good consience become part of an industry which takes no-end of fish from the wild, the vast majority of which either starve to death or perish because of incorrect husbandry.

I just spent a few hours reading all about Angel fish here - [URL="http/www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/fishes/angels"]http/www.wetwebmedia.com/marine/fishes/angels[/URL]

And it's heartbreaking to learn that so many of the prettier species have an appaling survival rate in captivity.

My fear is that if I get a marine tank Iam part of the problem, more people keeping salt tanks means more fish in shops to die, and more reefs being raped and cyanided.

what do you think?

doris

 

[xxBarneyxx]

It depends where your sourcing your livestock from. In the UK most marine livestock that comes into the country is taken from protected areas which are closely monitored, not over fished and have very specific capturing policies.

It is very possible to set up a full reef system which having to take anything from the ocean. There are many species of marine fish and inverts that are breed commercially as well as many corals which are grown commercially on farms (both fish and invert breeding/culturing is also becoming more prevalent at the "hobby" level as well).

You just have to be selective about where you source your livestock from.

The other argument for it as well is that the people that are keeping marine tanks are learning a great deal about the critters we are keeping. Many corals and fish that where impossible to be kept just a few years ago are now being successfully kept and bred which can only be a good thing for the wild reefs (the more knowledge we have of the reefs and the creature in them the better imo). It also helps raise general awareness of the reef system (for example my kids and my extended families kids all know more about reef's then most people just from coming round our house and watching "nemo" in our tank ).

There is of course no denying though that there are dodgy collectors who use capture methods like cyanide and do a great deal of damage to the reefs in their collecting. Also the not so good collectors and importers lose a huge amount of fish during transport. This is why you should be picky about who you get your livestock from.

The same however can be said for freshwater fish.

 

[scott133]

plus corals get fraged in the sea and they let them grow there for some amount of time the shiped then sold so it really would not harm the reef that much

regards scott

 

[SkiFletch]

The same however can be said for freshwater fish.