Discouraged – Captive-Bred Tank a Pipe Dream?

[uisge-beatha]

I started my nano reef about 9 months ago as an experiment – I wanted to know if it was feasible to have an all captive-bred tank at this stage in the hobby’s history. I realize that there are arguments for and against captive-breeding of marine ornamentals, but ethically I’m most comfortable with minimizing the effect my reef-keeping hobby has on the world’s reefs and their denizens by choosing purpose-raised specimens. I should add that I’m located in Toronto, Canada, so my access to livestock isn’t as good as it would be in the United States.

 

Here are my conclusions so far:

1. Live rock – check! Lots of options for dry or aqua-cultured mined fossil reefs are available. I chose Florida aqua-cultured rock, although I lost a lot of the life on the rocks due to the 7-day shipping time to my location.
2. Coral – excellent availability of coral frags. A tank containing all aqua-cultured or fragged coral is very feasible.
3. Inverts – very poor availability of captive-bred inverts. None of my CUC are captive-bred, and I’ve never seen this as an option, with the exception of berghia nudibranches.
4. Fish – ugh, here’s the rub. In theory, I should be able to stock my tank with captive-bred fish. However, I’ve had no end of problems trying to achieve this goal. Read on, if you’re still interested….

For my 24 gal tank, my ideal stocking list is a pair of ocellaris clownfish, a couple of banggai cardinals, and maybe one of YWG, royal gramma, or neon/orchid/indigo dottyback. This really shouldn’t pose a problem, right? Yeah, right....

• Dec. 2015 – pair of CB ocellaris from Canadian aquarium chain. One is doing well, one met with an early accidental death.
• Jan. 2016 – replaced CB ocellaris. Fish didn’t survive quarantine, due to an unknown illness. Suspect that chain store’s livestock are not all that healthy.
• Feb. 2016 – CB YWG from online shop in London, Ontario. Silly fish hosted tank overflow, and rarely ventured to sand bed. Slowly starved over 3 months, since he couldn’t compete for food with ocellaris at water surface.
• Mar. 2016 – pair of CB Banggais from local independent shop with excellent reputation. One is doing well, other only survived 24 hrs due to injury. Not sure if he was injured during netting or if I didn’t notice his injury when selecting him.
• Apr. 2016 – special-ordered replacement CB YWG and CB Banggai from online shop in London, Ontario. Waited 2 months for delivery, and then the delivery truck broke down. Delivery was rescheduled for last week after I threatened to cancel my order, but no fish were delivered. When I complained, the store owner said he didn’t think the fish were ready to travel again, and sent extra-large coral frags instead. Nice gesture, but dude, I’ve been waiting 2 months for specially ordered fish that I’m not getting!!

At this point, I have one lonely ocellaris, and one lonely Banggai. None of my local stores seem to have any CB YWGs, royal grammas, or dottybacks, and CB Banggais are rare. Do I keep trying to find CB fish, or give up and go wild-caught? Help!

[xAyanex]

Wow you have some bad luck! I don't know what to tell you... Of course I would think it would be better to keep trying to find CB fish, but I definitely feel your frustration!

[intarsiabox]

Have you tried looking up any Toronto Facebook reef groups? We have a guy in Edmonton that breeds all sorts of different types of clowns and some gobies. I'm sure Toronto has a few local breeders as it's a much bigger market.

[CronicReefer]

I think your main issue is just where you live. I live in Florida and getting captive bred fish from ORA is no problem whatsoever. Not everyone has this luxury but it is not impossible either. Don't be discouraged just understand it may be much more difficult for you because of availability in your area.

[Tamberav]

I started my nano reef about 9 months ago as an experiment – I wanted to know if it was feasible to have an all captive-bred tank at this stage in the hobby’s history. I realize that there are arguments for and against captive-breeding of marine ornamentals, but ethically I’m most comfortable with minimizing the effect my reef-keeping hobby has on the world’s reefs and their denizens by choosing purpose-raised specimens. I should add that I’m located in Toronto, Canada, so my access to livestock isn’t as good as it would be in the United States.

 

Here are my conclusions so far:

1. Live rock – check! Lots of options for dry or aqua-cultured mined fossil reefs are available. I chose Florida aqua-cultured rock, although I lost a lot of the life on the rocks due to the 7-day shipping time to my location.
2. Coral – excellent availability of coral frags. A tank containing all aqua-cultured or fragged coral is very feasible.
3. Inverts – very poor availability of captive-bred inverts. None of my CUC are captive-bred, and I’ve never seen this as an option, with the exception of berghia nudibranches.
4. Fish – ugh, here’s the rub. In theory, I should be able to stock my tank with captive-bred fish. However, I’ve had no end of problems trying to achieve this goal. Read on, if you’re still interested….

For my 24 gal tank, my ideal stocking list is a pair of ocellaris clownfish, a couple of banggai cardinals, and maybe one of YWG, royal gramma, or neon/orchid/indigo dottyback. This really shouldn’t pose a problem, right? Yeah, right....

• Dec. 2015 – pair of CB ocellaris from Canadian aquarium chain. One is doing well, one met with an early accidental death.
• Jan. 2016 – replaced CB ocellaris. Fish didn’t survive quarantine, due to an unknown illness. Suspect that chain store’s livestock are not all that healthy.
• Feb. 2016 – CB YWG from online shop in London, Ontario. Silly fish hosted tank overflow, and rarely ventured to sand bed. Slowly starved over 3 months, since he couldn’t compete for food with ocellaris at water surface.
• Mar. 2016 – pair of CB Banggais from local independent shop with excellent reputation. One is doing well, other only survived 24 hrs due to injury. Not sure if he was injured during netting or if I didn’t notice his injury when selecting him.
• Apr. 2016 – special-ordered replacement CB YWG and CB Banggai from online shop in London, Ontario. Waited 2 months for delivery, and then the delivery truck broke down. Delivery was rescheduled for last week after I threatened to cancel my order, but no fish were delivered. When I complained, the store owner said he didn’t think the fish were ready to travel again, and sent extra-large coral frags instead. Nice gesture, but dude, I’ve been waiting 2 months for specially ordered fish that I’m not getting!!

At this point, I have one lonely ocellaris, and one lonely Banggai. None of my local stores seem to have any CB YWGs, royal grammas, or dottybacks, and CB Banggais are rare. Do I keep trying to find CB fish, or give up and go wild-caught? Help!

 

Wow! What bad luck! Generally, captive bred are more healthy as they should be conditioned to aquarium life and not have been exposed to disease (assuming you got them in the bag before the LFS put them in their tanks) and not caught and shipped halfway around the world.

 

For clean up crew, tronchus snails are some of the best snails and will readily breed. You could get some of those and breed them in your tank yourself. Keyhole limpets, and Euplica scripta will also breed easily but you would have to find another reefer with them I suspect. Collonista snail is another and a more common hitchiker that will breed as well. ORA has captive bred urchins and peppermint shrimp if those are your fancy.

 

You should be able to get ORA fish there (maybe that is where yours are coming from?). I think what you NEED to do is get them the day they arrive IN the bag. Do not let them touch LFS water. Make sure the LFS knows this and calls you ASAP.

 

I would also find a local breeder for clowns or a breeder in canada willing to ship to you that has a good rep. Clowns should be doable without having to rely on a LFS.

 

I always buy captive bred when available, sometimes costs more but worth it for a a healthy conditioned fish. You just don't want them sharing tank water with the wild fish.

[Clown79]

You are going to have a difficult time finding captive bred livestock in Toronto.

 

You will find a good amount of corals which are fragged but not a lot of places breed fish- its quite the process.

 

The majority of the stores get live shipments through an importer.

 

There are plenty of location in Toronto/mississauga area

 

Fragbox - Wilson Ave

Reef boutique - Dufferin

Canada Corals - Meyerside Dr

Coral Reef Shop - Burlington

Discount Dragon - Dundas

R20 Aquarium - Dundas

Aquatic Kingdom - Dundas

Living Aquarium - Cambridge: Steves the owner, he may have captive bred fish.

 

Big Al's - Dundas St and Scarborough locations have the best reputation

[squamptonbc]

I would think the Toronto area would be a plethora of marine stuff, when I search online nearly everything seems to be back there...lol

 

We do have 1 good marine store in the Vancouver area here, J & L and they do ship nationwide and I never have issues with their livestock, always appear in good health, and they won't knowingly sell a ill fish. They usually have a fair amount of captive bred stuff.

 

They don't sell livestock directly on their website, but if you go to it and go to the new and noteworthy page, at the bottom they have a pdf document they update every couple of days to give you an idea of what they have.

 

 

What chain store back there sells marine stuff? Curious as the chains out this way, are freshwater only.

[Clown79]

Big Al's is the big chain store in Ontario. Each one is different.

 

We have quite a few stores for corals out here

[Orangutran]

Have you tried Krakens Aquarium? They seem to order a lot from ORA the last time I was there, and I am sure they can special order for you. I got a CB neon goby there, which is fat and healthy now. Just call ahead to see what they have. Good luck.

[Tamberav]

Clownfish depot has amazing clowns and says they ship to USA and Canada

 

https://www.facebook.com/ClownfishDepot/

[Nightstar]

I'm also in Toronto. I've seen captive bred fish at Big Al's occasionally. Generally clownfish, mostly occelaris. Sometimes cardinals, sometimes dottybacks. Once neon gobies. Thats all your going to get anywhere btw.

 

I think you need to reevaluate your selection criteria and your quarantine protocols. I hope you don't take this as an insult, I don't mean it as such. I just can't believe that those fatalities are merely chance. Purchasing infected fish is a recipe for disaster. I have seen fish I really wanted but passed them up due to their condition in a dealer's tank.

 

The volume and turnover at say, Big Al's precludes proper quarantine and treatment, their tanks are cryptocarion factories at best. Should you purchase from them go straight to a TTM protocol followed by quarantine and observation then treatment for anything else diagnosed. Once your DT is disease free you will need to quarantine any frags, colonies or inverts for at least 72 days at 78F before adding to keep it that way. This is not an easy thing to do.

 

I'm opposed to shipping fish or other animals for that matter, please don't encourage this practice. I mean would you box up a puppy or kitten and send it express post? It's morally reprehensible. I actually question the legality, at what point does it become animal cruelty?

 

There are local breeders of clownfish in the GTA. I was up in Keswick at Seb's place a couple weeks ago and saw some healthy clown fry in one of his tanks. Not many but there they were. Try joining the GTAaquaria forums and ask for captive bred clowns, I think you'll be surprised.

 

BTW avoid Canada Corals unless you want to pay 10x the price for any frag. I can't speak for frag box, I haven't been there.

 

Carl of Carl's Aquarium is a great guy with more years of experience than most reefers have alive. He quarantines and treats all fish prior to selling them so if you give him a call he might be able to help you get something healthy.

[Tamberav]

I'm opposed to shipping fish or other animals for that matter, please don't encourage this practice. I mean would you box up a puppy or kitten and send it express post? It's morally reprehensible. I actually question the legality, at what point does it become animal cruelty?

 

 

I disagree with this, fish packed well in blackout bags + temp controlled handle shipping very well. They are in the box for less than 24 hours. In fact, if you were moving/traveling, packing fish in oxygenated bags in a cooler would be 100x safer for them than in a bucket and the water does not slosh all over causing stress. ALWAYS travel with fish this way if a person is moving and has access to proper supplies.

 

There are much worse things in this hobby than shipping fish.

 

It is not the same as say.. putting a puppy in a box and shipping it.... I can't believe you compared it to that. There are many good dog breeders who ship btw and they do it in a way that is safe for the dog.. using crates and planes...

[Nightstar]

So... you know how sometimes shipments don't make it on time. They are left on the truck for the weekend, or on the tarmack for 12 hours in the hot sun/bitter cold winter.

 

You can be as opposed to the facts as you want, you wouldn't ship your dog that way.

[Tamberav]

So... you know how sometimes shipments don't make it on time. They are left on the truck for the weekend, or on the tarmack for 12 hours in the hot sun/bitter cold winter.

 

You can be as opposed to the facts as you want, you wouldn't ship your dog that way.

 

And you know fish stores put fish in diseased tanks and tons die. You literally just listed one that has disease and then condoned buying from it. Where do you think the fish come from? They are shipped and then put in a tank.

 

Where do breeders get their quality stock from to breed all those fish with? Shipping.

 

At least the fish shipped directly don't have to end up at Petco and die. I would take the 1% chance the shipment gets lost (and I have literally had tons and tons of orders shipped, none have ever been lost or left on a truck so its not common) than the big chance of landing at a LFS like petco.

 

All that being said, there are some fish (and inverts) that are best left in the ocean and some who do not ship well, so its best to always research a purchase. I wouldn't condone ordering from a place who doesn't pack properly, I ordered a 6line from reefs2go once and it came in a small bag in a small amount of water with no blackout bag, I never ordered a fish from them again. There is definitely a right and wrong way to do things.

[squamptonbc]

Gotcha. We don't have any Big Al's out here in BC, used to have 2 in the Vancouver area, but they closed up shop a fair amount of years ago now, I want to say maybe 5 or 6.

 

Went once or twice but never bought anything.

 

Big Al's is the big chain store in Ontario. Each one is different.

We have quite a few stores for corals out here

 

Do you think fish magically appear in Canada for us to buy?

 

Seems odd to say shipping is bad when the only reason we have fish and corals in Canada is because they are shipped, if nobody shipped fish, there would be no hobby in Canada, and in parts of Canada shipping is the ONLY way to obtain fish, corals, inverts etc.

 

That statement makes no sense to me at all.

 

Take ORA, they are in Florida, and the only way to get them to Canada or any store in North America outside of FL is to ship them.

 

Dogs and cats are routinely shipped, by air freight, daily all over the world, so are a multitude of other animals.

 

 

I'm also in Toronto. I've seen captive bred fish at Big Al's occasionally. Generally clownfish, mostly occelaris. Sometimes cardinals, sometimes dottybacks. Once neon gobies. Thats all your going to get anywhere btw.

 

I think you need to reevaluate your selection criteria and your quarantine protocols. I hope you don't take this as an insult, I don't mean it as such. I just can't believe that those fatalities are merely chance. Purchasing infected fish is a recipe for disaster. I have seen fish I really wanted but passed them up due to their condition in a dealer's tank.

 

The volume and turnover at say, Big Al's precludes proper quarantine and treatment, their tanks are cryptocarion factories at best. Should you purchase from them go straight to a TTM protocol followed by quarantine and observation then treatment for anything else diagnosed. Once your DT is disease free you will need to quarantine any frags, colonies or inverts for at least 72 days at 78F before adding to keep it that way. This is not an easy thing to do.

 

I'm opposed to shipping fish or other animals for that matter, please don't encourage this practice. I mean would you box up a puppy or kitten and send it express post? It's morally reprehensible. I actually question the legality, at what point does it become animal cruelty?

 

There are local breeders of clownfish in the GTA. I was up in Keswick at Seb's place a couple weeks ago and saw some healthy clown fry in one of his tanks. Not many but there they were. Try joining the GTAaquaria forums and ask for captive bred clowns, I think you'll be surprised.

 

BTW avoid Canada Corals unless you want to pay 10x the price for any frag. I can't speak for frag box, I haven't been there.

 

Carl of Carl's Aquarium is a great guy with more years of experience than most reefers have alive. He quarantines and treats all fish prior to selling them so if you give him a call he might be able to help you get something healthy.

[Clown79]

Most livestock that isn't bred locally is shipped via air.

At the airport the importer verifies the shipment and breaks it down for the various stores orders.

Then put on trucks for delivery.

 

Trucks/trailers are heated and there are reefer trailers for cold products. Everything is temp controlled and monitored.

 

Shipping is part of life.

 

Not all Big Al's are bad but the majority are not run well.

 

I like Canada Corals because their tanks are run well, the livestock is good, the place is spotless- so are the tanks. and I believe in you get what you pay for.

[Nightstar]

I explained in my first post that there are local(to the OP) captive bred fish and coral. Local cultured marines are available pretty much everywhere. We may not have the same selection as wild caught but we do have access to some attractive, easy to keep species.

 

Shipping live animals especially in the context of the aquarium trade is an entirely separate issue and only came up because you Tamberav suggest the OP buy from a non local source that which can be obtained locally.

 

Regardless of rationalizations fish are not accorded the same comfort and safety in shipping as dogs or cats or even cattle and sheep, yet they are all animals and subject to the same protections under the law. It's inhumane and probably a crime in this country to ship a live fish via mail/fedex/ups. Corals are also animals and likely subject to the same protections. This hobby has some very dirty little secrets.

[squamptonbc]

Not a very logical belief for anyone who keeps fish. No shipping = no hobby. You do realize Toronto is not the norm for most of Canada, hard to find fish and inverts in a lot of this country, so no shipping shuts the hobby down.

 

Where I am in BC, it's near impossible to find anything local, no stores at all, and not many if anyone breeding fish, people always asking for local bred clowns and nobody ever answers those posts, so seems not even clowns are bred on any large scale.

 

If your against shipping, you need a new hobby.

 

FYI: Nothing wrong with shipping fish.

 

 

 

I explained in my first post that there are local(to the OP) captive bred fish and coral. Local cultured marines are available pretty much everywhere. We may not have the same selection as wild caught but we do have access to some attractive, easy to keep species.

 

Shipping live animals especially in the context of the aquarium trade is an entirely separate issue and only came up because you Tamberav suggest the OP buy from a non local source that which can be obtained locally.

 

Regardless of rationalizations fish are not accorded the same comfort and safety in shipping as dogs or cats or even cattle and sheep, yet they are all animals and subject to the same protections under the law. It's inhumane and probably a crime in this country to ship a live fish via mail/fedex/ups. Corals are also animals and likely subject to the same protections. This hobby has some very dirty little secrets.

[Clown79]

Not only are fish and corals shipped but so is the majority of the food we ingest!

 

There are protocals and procedures in the transport business. A truck with livestock or temp controlled products cannot sit for days, not even hours. For every minute a truck/trailer sits, the receiving company pays for it and greatly.

 

Its an unfortunate part of life, many products are shipped-without importing/exporting most things would be unavailable to consumers in most countries.

 

Being in Canada- the hobby would be dead without shipping.

[Han Solo]

I started my nano reef about 9 months ago as an experiment – I wanted to know if it was feasible to have an all captive-bred tank at this stage in the hobby’s history. I realize that there are arguments for and against captive-breeding of marine ornamentals, but ethically I’m most comfortable with minimizing the effect my reef-keeping hobby has on the world’s reefs and their denizens by choosing purpose-raised specimens. I should add that I’m located in Toronto, Canada, so my access to livestock isn’t as good as it would be in the United States.

 

Here are my conclusions so far:

1. Live rock – check! Lots of options for dry or aqua-cultured mined fossil reefs are available. I chose Florida aqua-cultured rock, although I lost a lot of the life on the rocks due to the 7-day shipping time to my location.
2. Coral – excellent availability of coral frags. A tank containing all aqua-cultured or fragged coral is very feasible.
3. Inverts – very poor availability of captive-bred inverts. None of my CUC are captive-bred, and I’ve never seen this as an option, with the exception of berghia nudibranches.
4. Fish – ugh, here’s the rub. In theory, I should be able to stock my tank with captive-bred fish. However, I’ve had no end of problems trying to achieve this goal. Read on, if you’re still interested….

For my 24 gal tank, my ideal stocking list is a pair of ocellaris clownfish, a couple of banggai cardinals, and maybe one of YWG, royal gramma, or neon/orchid/indigo dottyback. This really shouldn’t pose a problem, right? Yeah, right....

• Dec. 2015 – pair of CB ocellaris from Canadian aquarium chain. One is doing well, one met with an early accidental death.
• Jan. 2016 – replaced CB ocellaris. Fish didn’t survive quarantine, due to an unknown illness. Suspect that chain store’s livestock are not all that healthy.
• Feb. 2016 – CB YWG from online shop in London, Ontario. Silly fish hosted tank overflow, and rarely ventured to sand bed. Slowly starved over 3 months, since he couldn’t compete for food with ocellaris at water surface.
• Mar. 2016 – pair of CB Banggais from local independent shop with excellent reputation. One is doing well, other only survived 24 hrs due to injury. Not sure if he was injured during netting or if I didn’t notice his injury when selecting him.
• Apr. 2016 – special-ordered replacement CB YWG and CB Banggai from online shop in London, Ontario. Waited 2 months for delivery, and then the delivery truck broke down. Delivery was rescheduled for last week after I threatened to cancel my order, but no fish were delivered. When I complained, the store owner said he didn’t think the fish were ready to travel again, and sent extra-large coral frags instead. Nice gesture, but dude, I’ve been waiting 2 months for specially ordered fish that I’m not getting!!

At this point, I have one lonely ocellaris, and one lonely Banggai. None of my local stores seem to have any CB YWGs, royal grammas, or dottybacks, and CB Banggais are rare. Do I keep trying to find CB fish, or give up and go wild-caught? Help!

 

That's some really shitty luck and probably got a very fun past few months. You could start a seahorse tank? There is a good sized industry for captive bred seahorses and pipefish, and then fill it with macroalgae.

[Hammerstone]

Not only are fish and corals shipped but so is the majority of the food we ingest!

 

There are protocals and procedures in the transport business. A truck with livestock or temp controlled products cannot sit for days, not even hours. For every minute a truck/trailer sits, the receiving company pays for it and greatly.

 

Its an unfortunate part of life, many products are shipped-without importing/exporting most things would be unavailable to consumers in most countries.

 

Being in Canada- the hobby would be dead without shipping.

 

also truckers have to strictly log their hours and often have many stops to make. If they don't deliver when promised and aren't truthful on their log it's their ass. Just my two cents. I'm talking about big load truckers.

[Clown79]

^ agree

[Tamberav]

I explained in my first post that there are local(to the OP) captive bred fish and coral. Local cultured marines are available pretty much everywhere. We may not have the same selection as wild caught but we do have access to some attractive, easy to keep species.

 

Shipping live animals especially in the context of the aquarium trade is an entirely separate issue and only came up because you Tamberav suggest the OP buy from a non local source that which can be obtained locally.

 

Regardless of rationalizations fish are not accorded the same comfort and safety in shipping as dogs or cats or even cattle and sheep, yet they are all animals and subject to the same protections under the law. It's inhumane and probably a crime in this country to ship a live fish via mail/fedex/ups. Corals are also animals and likely subject to the same protections. This hobby has some very dirty little secrets.

 

Fish actually are given the same comfort and saftey. Those bags in dark styro boxes are quiet safe, much safer than putting them in large sloshing tanks with hard sides. The temp is fairly stable, no drastic changes, its in a styro box for a reason, the bags are soft sided, packed with oxygen to ensure they can breath easy, and the closed bags controls ammonia via pH, and it is dark.

 

I sold some of my fish before I moved, I had them packed the DAY BEFORE the swap in oxygenated bags, by the time they were driven to the swap the next day, traded, and brought home to their new owners, they were probably in those bags over 24 hours (which is longer than shipped fish who usually go from 5-7pm to 8-10am). There were NO fatalities or injuries and I sold many. I packed them that way because it was the SAFEST way to ensure the fish survived and they did. Putting them in 5g buckets would have been horribly stressful and they could have possibly freaked out injuring themselves on the side or been deprived of oxygen.

 

You can't be in this hobby without being okay with shipping in some sense, even if you bought local bred fish, those original parent fish came from SOMEWHERE shipped... unless you are saying it is okay to "torture some fish" as long as your specific fish aren't "tortured by shipping". I get you are trying to minimize the stress of the fish but its still double standards.

 

Many breeders ship their fish, maybe even the ones you buy from, what do you think they do with tanks filled with clowns? Furthermore, some of the breeders in this hobby who are making leaps for this hobby breeding new fish never been done before... live in smaller towns with little demand, they ship their fish. Should we tell them to stop breeding, stop progressing?

 

Should we continue to inbreed clowns until they are deformed? We need to add new genes from time to time, we need to ship fish to do that.

 

P.S. It would be great if every fish was eventually captive bred, I think that is ideal, I also think it is great to support local breeders when you can, they work hard.

 

But seriously, the LFS would close if shipping were banned, this hobby would be over.

[uisge-beatha]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement, everyone. I'm hoping that my luck will turn around with this tank soon! I'd really like to stick with this experiment, and the concerns about shipping livestock expressed by some of the OPs are a great example of how wild-caught fish can be problematic - WC are even more likely to be adversely affected by shipping than CB fish.

 

Getting involved with the local reef community is great advice, and something that I'd love to do. This would certainly be a good way to source CB (and up-for-adoption) fish. Unfortunately, as a working mom of three kids with several volunteer roles to boot, I just don't have the time right now. I stop by my local fish shops when I can, which is every 2-3 weeks, so obviously I'm going to miss some of the stock, too. However, I'm in no hurry - it seems that only bad things happen quickly in this hobby!

 

> I think you need to reevaluate your selection criteria and your quarantine protocols. I hope you don't take this as an insult, I don't mean it as such. I just can't believe that those fatalities are merely chance. Purchasing infected fish is a recipe for disaster. I have seen fish I really wanted but passed them up due to their condition in a dealer's tank.

 

No offense taken, Nightstar! I'm new to SW, so I'm sure I'm not seeing all the problems with fish that a more experienced person would. That said, I've only lost one fish to disease, as far as I know. The accidental death got himself wedged between the tank wall and a piece of ABS pipe "decor", but the accident may have been exacerbated by illness or weakness. The YWG slowly starved (despite spot-feeding him tasty morsels), but I suppose his strange behaviour could have been due to illness. The injured Banggai was clearly missing a chunk of flesh. I spent 10 minutes watching the 5 Banggais in the tank before picking my two. I'm pretty sure he wasn't injured before he was netted, but I was also holding a squirming 3-year-old at the time, so anything is possible!

 

I do quarantine all fish for a minimum of 1 month, so all the losses except the YWG happened in the QT. I treat all fish with PraziPro, and if I see signs of illness, I do my best to treat it and re-start the QT clock. I QT coral for 2 weeks, with a Revive dip on day 1 and day 8, plus a peroxide dip if necessary to get rid of algae. I don't QT inverts because my understanding is that they don't typically carry fish/coral diseases or pests.

 

 

[Nightstar]

 

I sold some of my fish before I moved, I had them packed the DAY BEFORE the swap in oxygenated bags, by the time they were driven to the swap the next day, traded, and brought home to their new owners, they were probably in those bags over 24 hours (which is longer than shipped fish who usually go from 5-7pm to 8-10am). There were NO fatalities or injuries and I sold many. I packed them that way because it was the SAFEST way to ensure the fish survived and they did. Putting them in 5g buckets would have been horribly stressful and they could have possibly freaked out injuring themselves on the side or been deprived of oxygen.

You seem to be missing the point. I'm not against you the hobbyist bagging your fish for a drive to a swap. I'm against you or anyone else shipping said bagged fish via one of the common shippers ie. UPS/Fedex/Post(Can or USA) as these services do NOT cater to living creatures. I've had parcels rerouted and days or weeks late. Local reefers have had dead animals delivered days to weeks late or left on the stoop in the heat/cold. These are common experiences. I hope that clarifies my position for you.

 

Since the OP was requesting captive bred marine sources I see no reason not to buy local. We have a thriving local captive marine community. There is no need to ship captive marines into Toronto unless the specific animal you seek isn't propagated here(ie. ORA dragonetts or dottybacks). So there is no need to promote a practice that results in so many needless casualties.

 

uisge-beatha, it can be challenging to select healthy specimens for aquarists of any experience level. Your best bet is buying from a reputable local breeder or an importer who quarantines properly. I don't think you need to do any more than join the local online forum and make a request for that which you seek. No need to attend MAST meetings although they are an excellent way to connect with locals.

 

Good luck with your CB reef.