> Now if you'd like to continue this discussion, I'm more than privvy to
> have it, although I don't want to bother a native fish list since I'm
> here to get away from that whole scene.
I have always been fascinated with what I believe to be a widespread
disregard of the truth by many reefkeepers. I've never really had
any facts to back my opinion, just scattered rumors about dynamite,
poisoning, and my observations of how much coral gets cycled through
the average pet shop, for yuppie "aquarists", which is destined to
have a lifespan shorter than the average yuppie's attention span.
The amount of live coral sold nationwide must truly be staggering.
Where does it all come from? I just am not seeing that many
aquaculture factilites hawking captive-propagated coral, so I
naturally assume it is wild caught. It's not just coral either.
Desirable marine fishes, other inverts, &c..
In Jackson, the only privately owned LFS's primarily stock marine
fishes. Now, there are two reasons for this: 1) PetsMart is not in
competition with them for marine livestock, and 2) the markup and
turnover is very attractive. Most of the time, as the PSG's tell me,
their livestock is sold before it even leaves the distributor. The
reefkeepers want to pounce on their latest "pretty" before the pet
shop has time to kill it (they prefer to do THAT themselves). The
animals which do make it into the dealer's tanks are a pretty sorry
lot. I certainly would not purchase animals in such poor condition,
but I guess there are plenty of desperate folks who do. This is not
to say that all LFS's sell bad livestock, just that the ones in
Jackson do, and I suspect they sell marines more out of a love for
the income rather than any real love for the animals. Say what you
will about PetsMart, but they made a concious decision to stay away
from marine livestock. I hope this remains their position in the
future.
On the other side, we will never had widespread captive propagation
without widespread interest in the marine hobby, with economic
incentives to do so. I guess one way to ensure the latter would be
to severely restrict the amount animals that may be imported and/or
harvested so that distributors HAVE to grow their own if they want to
make any money.
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