# is buying Wild Caught cichlids wrong?, I want your opinion



## prinmel (Dec 1, 2009)

A great new fish store popped up by my house that carries a ton of different cichlids, which there is not a whole lot of places to buy here. Anyway after a long conversation with the owner she told me that she gets her fish from overseas, I can hand that, and that a lot of them are wild caught, and so really colorful. But should I condone the reaping of nature to get Ã¢â‚¬Å"better colorÃ¢â‚¬Â


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

It depends on the cichlid, some are plentiful and some are not. If you go to www.fishbase.org, look up a fish and scroll to the bottom you will see an IUCN Red List of Threatened Species status.


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## Number6 (Mar 13, 2003)

I do not think it makes a difference what one does with an animal, you "consume" it whether you eat it or take it in as a pet, use it for clothes, etc. Anyway you slice and dice it, the animal is consumed by you, the consumer.

So, is it ok to take any animal from the wild population? I believe it depends on the time it takes for the population to replace that individual versus how frequently mankind takes an individual. 
I also think that the type/quality of the individual matters, e.g. if you take the dominant and best looking fish, that takes longer to be replaced by nature than just some random fry.

So, the most ethical to take is newborn fry from the wild... (highest rate of mortality, so increased likelihood of death anyway), then fry of any other kind with the dominant fish of a location very last.

Hope that gives you something to digest at least... :thumb:


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## Pali (Dec 22, 2009)

You should get what you will be the most happy with!

Personaly I buy W/C fish most of the time, if I can get them W/C. There are a bunch of different reasons why people go for W/C rather then tank bred fish.

I personaly like the looks of W/C's most of the time and to get a more wide spred gene pool, then I don't mind that I get 2-3x the money for F1 fry then I would get for F2 and F3's. They can be more challangeing then tank bred fish too.

Is reaping from the nature now a wrong thing?

It's not endangered species so IMO there is nothing wrong with buying imported fish, aslong the importer and the people doing the whole shipping deal know what they are doing, there is no harm done as I see it.

What cichlids are we talking about, tho I don't think you have to worry about cutting in on there population in the lake. Besides there are also a lot of locals who make a liveing on fishing our beloved cichlids makeing our hobbie possible, so in my point of view it's only helping someone out who need the money a lot more then the hobbie breeders like myself in the rest of the world.

just my 2 cents


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## DJRansome (Oct 29, 2005)

What I like to do is buy F1 fry from a hatchery that has wild caught breeders. One pair can supply thousands of us. I do have wild-caught synodontis multipunctatus, but they were caught 7 years before and owned by two other fishkeepers first.

It's true that local people need the fish trade to eat, but they could throw back the threatened ones...most species in Lake Malawi are not threatened I believe.


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## BillD (May 17, 2005)

If you look at the case of the Cardinal tetra, 80,000,000 are caught and sold into the hobby every year. Seems like a lot, but if you look at the big picture, it is a good thing for the Cardinal. It provides employment for the local indigenous people, which in turn reduces the need to raze the forests for short term economic gain. The number is sustainable, and the locals have a vested interest in protecting the natural environment. If the cardinal were to be mass bred, it would likely mean the area would fall to development. In this case, wild caught is to be encouraged.


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## noddy (Nov 20, 2006)

BillD said:


> If you look at the case of the Cardinal tetra, 80,000,000 are caught and sold into the hobby every year. Seems like a lot, but if you look at the big picture, it is a good thing for the Cardinal. It provides employment for the local indigenous people, which in turn reduces the need to raze the forests for short term economic gain. The number is sustainable, and the locals have a vested interest in protecting the natural environment. If the cardinal were to be mass bred, it would likely mean the area would fall to development. In this case, wild caught is to be encouraged.


Great post.


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## shaguars7 (Apr 12, 2009)

+1 on that post


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## dogofwar (Apr 5, 2004)

In the grand scheme of things, supplying the aquarium hobby with wild fish is pretty minor compared to other threats to wild cichlids and their habitats.

I think the bigger questions are:

- Why do people think that they need wild fish? 
- What is the aquarium hobby doing to support preservation / conservation of native cichlid habitats?

Matt


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## Fogelhund (Dec 3, 2002)

DJRansome said:


> It depends on the cichlid, some are plentiful and some are not. If you go to www.fishbase.org, look up a fish and scroll to the bottom you will see an IUCN Red List of Threatened Species status.


Some of the fish on there don't seem to be accurate... some oddballs for certain.

Fisheries (catching fish for human food consumption) is a far great threat to fish populations than the harvesting of the fish for the ornamental aquarium trade.

The trade also tends to do things to preserve fish stocks, that fisheries don't. Check out this project undertaken through Ad Konings, and the Stuart Grant Fund, to stop illegal fishing. These wouldn't be possible if the aquarium trade wasn't important.

http://www.cichlidpress.com/smgfund/smgfund16.html


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## bearded lab (Apr 28, 2010)

And they reproduce like rabbits!


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