FW vs SW aquariums

Has anyone here given any thought to this issue?

Actually came up in a lecture today. Interestingly enough though the profs lecture notes only mentioned SW aquariums as being a problem, she said someone previously argued with her to the end about FW aquariums. FW still has its problems such as release of invasive species by farms. Besides an isolated story or two I haven't heard of environmental effects regarding harvesting fish for FW aquarium trade though.

We've all heard the stories of dynamite fishing, cyanide, harvesting of "live rock/corals" etc. Big problems in the past, how big are they today?

Do you guys think that SW hobby will ever have a comparable environmental impact to FW? It seems in the recent years their has been a demand by SW aquarists for net caught fish and aquacultured marine specimens is definetly on the rise. I've even heard of schemes where rocks are brought into certain areas, allowed to sit for a few years, and then harvested to be sold as base rock for marine tanks.

Comments?

Actually this probably belongs in ethics and conservation forum.

Edited by critterguy, 04 September 2008 - 12:59 PM.

Finding a group of SW fish collectors using cyanide to catch fish is going to be fairly difficult today. Fish caught in that manner have terribly high mortality rates. Which leads to high loss and unhappy customers.

Tank bred is becoming quite common in popular fish and inverts. Coral propagation has become a pretty huge business that even most coral hobbyists dabble in at some point. Of course many animals in the hobby are wild-caught, but you could make a very robust tank from only captive-bred/propogated inhabitants. The live rock you are talking about is often referred to as maricultured. It is also a common practice on lots of corals/clams etc.

I'm not sure how much damage the taking of live rock does. I'm sure it isn't a pleasant experience for the environment. I don't know what sort of practices are used in the harvesting of the stuff, but it would be interesting to find out.

I'm sure that collection for the hobbyist market does some damage, but I'd think that it is terribly minuscule compared to the damage caused by the food industry, general habitat destruction, and pollution.

All the detriments of the marine trade you mentioned still exist. The use of cyanide, dynamite and other such catastrophic methods are declining, in part because educated aquarists are demanding livestock harvested in sustainable fashion. Another reason is the reefs are dying and the fish are disappearing in those places where such practices have taken place. After a certain amount of damage it's no longer worth while to fish in those places.

There are two additional factors with marine fish which are much less of an issue with freshwater.
One is the number of marine species that are collected despite being inapporpriate captives. Several species of angelfish in particular just do not adapt to captivity and slowly starve. Even though the collectors, wholesalers and retailers all are aware of the problem, they continue to collect and sell them because there is still a healthy market for them.
Another big difference between fresh and salt is the difficulty in breeding marine species in captivity. The technology has come along way for a handful of selected species in the last two decades but still the cost is just too prohibitive. Importing wild caught is so very much more profitable, plus many marine favorites will most likely never be captive bred.

On the surface it would seem marine aquarium trade is more harmful to the environment. The aspect I would be interested to see addressed is the impact on the environment of the large scale commercial fish hatcheries. Not just from exotic releases, but water usage, pathogens etc.

Mikez/Clayton:

All very good points.

-on the live rock, I've assume it was simply chunks from the reef itself or the surrounding area...which would explain how different live rock looks when it comes from different locales.
-Some FW fish are also collected despite them being unsuitable captives, as well as a number that are just plain impractical for all but the most dedicated/rich. But it is shameful that stuff like certain nudibranchs appear in stores when they are guaranteed to starve to death in captivity.
-what marine favorites would be impossible to captive breed?
-Thats also what I was getting at. We often bag on fish farming as a food source due to the large amount of fishmeal used to raise a relatively small amount of meat, and also pollution. But aside from the use of the resulting creatures I can't think of much of a difference between ornamental and food aquaculture.

Clayton is correct about captive propagation of coral. I was thinking only of fish and forgot about that. There are some people propagating coral commercially. I'm not sure how profitable it is but I'd guess more so than trying to breed marine fish in large numbers.
CG, there are many marine species whos' reproductive stratagies are too diffcult to recreate in captivity for various reasons. Many have pelagic larvae that require specific foods difficult or immposible to supply. If you're interested, google it. It's quite a facinating branch of fish husbandry.

25 years ago, the culture of live corals and marine fish in captivity was considered a pipe dream at best.
20 years ago, technological leaps suddenly made it possible.
15 years ago, numerous marine fish farms popped up, culturing a dozen or so species.
5 years ago, home hobbyists were collectively cranking out more corals and inverts than the farms.
Today, well over 100 fish species and hundreds of corals and inverts are routinely cultured by both farms and hobbyists. That number is fully expected to increase just as exponentially as it already has in the coming years.

Live rock is also routinely harvested by the hundreds of tons, but NOT by the aquarium hobby. Third-world nations have found dredged coral to be a handy building material for roads and runways. The few bits that wind up in the hobby are not chiseled from the reefs as Audubon and other detractors would lead you to believe, but are instead simply picked up from the seafloor once they come off on their own. This actually preserves them, since rolling around in storms only ruins them anyway. It's also a lot less work.
More work, but much more common nowadays, is the mariculture of these rocks. Thousands of tons of dry-land quarried chunks of limestone are dumped into the sea and left to sit for years, resulting in rocks nearly indistinguishable from the old wild-harvested rock we used to use. These rocks are of superior quality to the wild ones, since they come from the gulf of mexico and are collected by people who care. Asa result, they are NOT infested with numerous pest organisms which plague pacific rocks, and they don't sit around for weeks in some grossly inadequate bins waiting for export where they rot, and they have to travel only a short domestic distance. This translates into rock which is much much better and ultimately cheaper than the pacific stuff which is largely being phased out, and as if that weren't enough, it is now possible for a hobbyist to make his own highly suitable liverock at home.
In short, the ecological impact of the marine hobby on the wild is very, very small and shrinking all the time.
The industrial and agricultural impacts, however, are staggering. Not our fault, but everyone still wants to blame the hobby because it's easier to do so than put the blame on issues that simply cannot be addressed; it make people feel better when they try to ban the reef hobby instead of wringing their hands over their inability to do anything about foreign dredging.

As was alluded to, what about the indirect impacts such as energy needs (like kwh?) associated per gallon in a SW vs. FW aquarium?

Mysterman, you made some good points. I think you might be downplaying the damage potentially done by hobbyist collection though. I don't doubt that its impact is far smaller, than say dredging or pollution in general. However, I'm sure it is still doing damage to an already endangered ecosystem.

Much of what was said about live rock is true, but I doubt the hobby is "saving" anything by using live rock that has broken off of a reef. It is broken off of the reef and then sustains a whole ecosystem of its own. Taking it in this way might not harm the original reef, but I'm sure it is detrimental in its own way. This is also likely a big part of how new reefs get established etc.

Captive breeding is becoming very common, but go to a pet shop and ask if their clowns are captive bred or wild caught. In my experience it is shifting more towards captive bred, but lots of shops still carry the wild caughts as they are simply cheaper. Considering that clowns are about as difficult to breed as most cichlids, there are still a lot of hurdles here. Though I fully agree that we are on the right track and this will increase. There are also some really cool breeding projects going on to get things like clowns with exceptional patterning or that can live in fresh water that might help to cut the desire for some of these wild-caught fish.


Ashtonmj, in a home aquarium I would think that it is in general the same. If you want a cool water darter tank with lots of flow and really high light for plant growth you're going to need all the same stuff you need in a cool water reef tank with high flow and high light. If you want a fish only tank, then it's the same again. You need an appropriately sized tank and a way to filter the water. Everything else depends on the needs of the specific fish, which can be quite variable in either fresh or salt water. There will be some overhead since salt is involved and it has to be processed in a factory somewhere, but I would think that is outside of the scope of what you mentioned.

Edited by Clayton, 05 September 2008 - 10:51 AM.

Considering that clowns are about as difficult to breed as most cichlids, there are still a lot of hurdles here.

I've bred my share of cichlids over the years, some harder than others. I have never yet heard of cichlid fry that can only be fed microalgae or rotifers as the clowns do. Even the easiest clowns still require significantly more care to get to the fry to baby brine stage. That is the reason that captive bred clowns are 3 or 4 times more expensive than imported. It's true that the more progressive shops are offering more captive bred and that some hobbiests are paying the extra for the sake of the environment. Bottom line is, well, the bottom line. Untill the price of captive bred comes down, or imported fish are no longer offered, captive bred marines will most likely stay a small percentage of the trade.

As far as energy consumption, my "fish only" marine tanks use the exact same equipment as an unplanted freshwater tank. If anything, a planted freshwater tank must use a tad more juice to run the extra lights [somewhat offset if you use the plants as your filtration].
Once you get into corals, that changes drastically. Intense halide lighting required for corals uses huge amounts of energy. Not only that, but the lighting plus all the pumps drives the heat up into the danger zone requiring a chiller be added as well. No doubt that kind of setup would consume considerably more energy [and cash] to run.

Once you get into corals, that changes drastically. Intense halide lighting required for corals uses huge amounts of energy. Not only that, but the lighting plus all the pumps drives the heat up into the danger zone requiring a chiller be added as well. No doubt that kind of setup would consume considerably more energy [and cash] to run.

You're comparing the top end of corals to the bottom end of planted tanks. I've got a beautiful 3 gallon reef sitting on my desk right now. It runs on a 9w PC light, a tiny little HOB filter, and a little bitty micro pump. An equally interesting planted tank could be run in the setup with a different bulb.

Now on the other hand if you want very demanding plants and an extremely lush tank you're likely going to have really high powered halides, and a chiller to combat the heat, specialized fertilizers, CO2 injection, and probably some method of maintaining alkalinity. Which is essentially the same stuff you need for higher end corals.


The rotifers are a good point. As with everything in a marine tank it is more difficult to come by so food can be a challenge. It is certainly a factor in the cost of captive raised fish.

Edited by Clayton, 05 September 2008 - 12:48 PM.

You're comparing the top end of corals to the bottom end of planted tanks. I've got a beautiful 3 gallon reef sitting on my desk right now. It runs on a 9w PC light, a tiny little HOB filter, and a little bitty micro pump. An equally interesting planted tank could be run in the setup with a different bulb.

Now on the other hand if you want very demanding plants and an extremely lush tank you're likely going to have really high powered halides, and a chiller to combat the heat, specialized fertilizers, CO2 injection, and probably some method of maintaining alkalinity. Which is essentially the same stuff you need for higher end corals.
The rotifers are a good point. As with everything in a marine tank it is more difficult to come by so food can be a challenge. It is certainly a factor in the cost of captive raised fish.

Agreed. Both are extreme examples and probably represent only a small portion of the hobby.

There are lots of SW hobbyists in my local aquarium club. They love to swap coral frags and some of them are breeding fish. They care where their livestock and live rock comes from. Those of us who give a hoot have to make

Last spring we had a guest speaker who is a live rock farmer. He has some ocean floor near the Florida Keys where he places quarried rock and later collects it to sell. The pictures he showed us were amazing. He was allowed to use a spot on the ocean floor that was barren looking, just sand. He added his rocks, and gradually more and more animals came until it's swarming with fish. He lives near Toledo, Ohio and goes down a few times a year to add new rock and harvest some to sell. He brings it up in 5 gallon buckets and it never leaves the water. He drives home, selling rock along the way. It's a cool operation.

We all liked his 'rock kabobs.' At first, he just dumped rock on the ocean floor and that was okay, as long as there weren't any hurricanes. Over the years, he learned to pile the rocks up on poles. He even orients them all in one certain direction so they won't get damaged when a hurricane goes through. That way the rock is all colonized evenly and efficiently.

Terra Sub Aqua

That is pretty cool Schambers. They used to sell real live rock like that too. Though you paid a fortune shipping water. The old timers all claim that it was the hay day of in-tank bio-diversity, but I wasn't in the hobby back then. In fact I might have been in pampers.

If I go to put a tank together I might consider him for some of the rock.

-what marine favorites would be impossible to captive breed?

Clown trigger? Several years ago it happened that Albert Thiel and I worked for the same company. He shared with me his idea about how to breed clown triggers - it would not be an undertaking for a hobbyist. But that was in 1999 - for all I know it's being done regularly these days.

I guess species that have a really long floating pelagic larval stage could be tough...but lots of advancements are being made. Invert breeding seems to be lagging behind although Thor amboinensis(sexy anemone shrimp) has been bred. I doubt that their will ever be a way for home aquarists to raise these particular SW organisms as easily as even tougher freshwater species simply because pelagic life is an annoying thing to cater to in captivity.

Mikez: Would you say that low tech or high tech reef setups are more natural? Would a high tech setup mimic the most luxuriant part of the reef whereas the low tech ones would mimiv an area of lower light with different coral species? High tech planted tanks are actually very unnatural and I can ionly think of a place or two where anything remotely similar could occur.

Edited by critterguy, 06 September 2008 - 04:17 PM.

I guess species that have a really long floating pelagic larval stage could be tough...but lots of advancements are being made.

It's not just the pelagic stage of the life cycle that is difficult, but also the microscopic organisms required to grow the larvae out to eating baby brine shrimp size. I know several of the Centropyge angels have been bred in captivity but the larvae do not survive on the standard micoalgae or rotifers offered. Apparently there is a specific food item required which has not yet been discovered.

Mikez: Would you say that low tech or high tech reef setups are more natural? Would a high tech setup mimic the most luxuriant part of the reef whereas the low tech ones would mimiv an area of lower light with different coral species? High tech planted tanks are actually very unnatural and I can ionly think of a place or two where anything remotely similar could occur.

I would have to say the high tech reefs with intense halide lighting are more natural in the sense that tropical coral reefs in shallow water are exposed to sun light at the highest intensity level anywhere on the planet. I know from a TV show that the Waikiki Aquarium has had excellent luck propogating corals in open air under the intense natural Hawaii sun light.
Those kind of conditions are very difficult to reproduce without the best hardware.

There are many shrimp that are easily raised by home hobbyists. There's even a book or three on the subject, such as "How to raise & train your Peppermint shrimp." It's not especially easy, but now that we know how, it's no all that hard, either. I've raised camel shrimp myself with no effort and peppermints with some effort.
While some Centropyge angels are still proving tough, many more are now being cranked out with relative ease. Naturally, the easy ones are the less desirable ones, but they're teaching us plenty. Again, I've done one species myself, the Teardrop.

Many species considered impossible to keep on account of a specialized diet, by the way, are easily manufactured into easy ones. When a larval fish, which has no dietary specialization, undergoes metamorphosis into the juvenile stage or soon thereafter, it will switch gears to it's specialized diet, like coral or sponge or whatever. However, if none of these food items are present at that time, the fish will remain in it's unspecialized state. After a time the switching phase is past, and the diet is set for life.
Does this mean that obligate corallivores and spongemunchers can be raised forevermore on good old flake food? YES! It means that exactly. There is even a company in France which does this very thing, selling various butterflies and angels and such to elated hobbyists who never thought they'd be able to keep fish like these. This company is still doing things the hard way by collecting larvae in the wild instead of just making them in the lab with hormone injections, but they're making more money for now by getting the tax writeoff of researching larval collection and transport techniques. *sigh* Someday that'll change, I'm sure, and other companies will start cranking out thousands of very lucrative and desirable specimens.

One "problem" in the whole system is that breeders are doing most of the work while farmers aren't.
By this I mean that instead of just using standard fishfarming techniques to mass produce thousands of fry, they are letting the fish spawn normally.
There is a reason for this, of course. Most mariculture places have a dual identity as research facilities, and the research side is a nonprofit. It's kind of a scam, but the way they work is that on one hand they are a farm, but on the other they are a research lab studying HOW to farm marine species. This leads them to be able to keep their profits while still being considered nonprofit. This is nice for them, and for science, but it sure slows down the productivity. Once they finally quit milking that cash cow, maybe they'll get down to business and start cranking out some fish in mass quantity, significantly lowering their prices.

As for reef rubble rocks being the things that form new reefs... no. These just roll around in the sand and get smothered by it. Even worse, in a storm they often get hurled against the reefs, doing lots of damage.

There are many shrimp that are easily raised by home hobbyists. There's even a book or three on the subject, such as "How to raise & train your Peppermint shrimp." It's not especially easy, but now that we know how, it's no all that hard, either. I've raised camel shrimp myself with no effort and peppermints with some effort.
While some Centropyge angels are still proving tough, many more are now being cranked out with relative ease. Naturally, the easy ones are the less desirable ones, but they're teaching us plenty. Again, I've done one species myself, the Teardrop.

Many species considered impossible to keep on account of a specialized diet, by the way, are easily manufactured into easy ones. When a larval fish, which has no dietary specialization, undergoes metamorphosis into the juvenile stage or soon thereafter, it will switch gears to it's specialized diet, like coral or sponge or whatever. However, if none of these food items are present at that time, the fish will remain in it's unspecialized state. After a time the switching phase is past, and the diet is set for life.
Does this mean that obligate corallivores and spongemunchers can be raised forevermore on good old flake food? YES! It means that exactly. There is even a company in France which does this very thing, selling various butterflies and angels and such to elated hobbyists who never thought they'd be able to keep fish like these. This company is still doing things the hard way by collecting larvae in the wild instead of just making them in the lab with hormone injections, but they're making more money for now by getting the tax writeoff of researching larval collection and transport techniques. *sigh* Someday that'll change, I'm sure, and other companies will start cranking out thousands of very lucrative and desirable specimens.

One "problem" in the whole system is that breeders are doing most of the work while farmers aren't.
By this I mean that instead of just using standard fishfarming techniques to mass produce thousands of fry, they are letting the fish spawn normally.
There is a reason for this, of course. Most mariculture places have a dual identity as research facilities, and the research side is a nonprofit. It's kind of a scam, but the way they work is that on one hand they are a farm, but on the other they are a research lab studying HOW to farm marine species. This leads them to be able to keep their profits while still being considered nonprofit. This is nice for them, and for science, but it sure slows down the productivity. Once they finally quit milking that cash cow, maybe they'll get down to business and start cranking out some fish in mass quantity, significantly lowering their prices.

As for reef rubble rocks being the things that form new reefs... no. These just roll around in the sand and get smothered by it. Even worse, in a storm they often get hurled against the reefs, doing lots of damage.

Wow, thats some interesting stuff! I'm out of touch. I didn't realize they were cranking out the little angels. Are they commonly available commercially?
My point on the specialized diet was pertaining to the larval stage. My understanding was they could get plenty of larvae but after a certain number of days they die off despite the availability of food.
The idea of obligate coral feeders being raised on flake is pretty revolutionary! That's something I never even considered possible. I'd like to learn more about it. Any links I could check out?

The french company that does this nonspecialized larval rearing has a french name which translates as "Aquafish." Lame, yes, but that's translation for you. ( actually, I think the name IS Aquafish in french, whatever that is ) The main man of the place is named LaFour. I assume they have a website, but I've never tried to find it.

Commercially available angels? Not enough to be worth mentioning yet. Sporadically you may find an odd batch but that's about it. You're right in that the larvae are particularly difficult, but I know the mystery will be solved soon enough at the rate things are going. Some species are much easier than most, but the demand is low for those and everybody is trying to raise Flames instead...

There is even a hobbyist-level book on the market now by Chris Whittenrich which gives very good details on the breeding and rearing of 90, count 'em 90, marine species common to the hobby. It's chock full of the very info we all had to sign non-disclosure/non-compete agreements about not 5 years ago. The author probably made a lot of farmers angry, but it's for the best, really. The broader the hobby base knowledge level, the more it can advance. This is the guy who at this very moment as I type this is selling tankraised Mandarins at MACNA which eat pellet food.

Edited by Mysteryman, 07 September 2008 - 08:13 AM.

Never heard of a teardrop angelfish...do you mean butterflyfish?

Interesting on peppermints! I have yet to find a happy ending to a breeding project involving those guys. By no effort with camel shrimp...willing to describe what happens?

So are you saying that harvesting of reef rubble actually helps a reef? I'd be willing to bet reef rubble has its own host of critters that is different from the actual reef itself.

What would be really cool would be if hermit crabs, land crabs/hermits, or better yet, coconut crabs, could be bred and raised in captivity.