Aquaculture fish..

[Roberth101]

I understand the importance of purchasing the aquaculture fish over wild caught. But my concern is the excessive amount of money that is required to purchase some of the species. Double if not more than the price of wild caught. And if it is a harder to acquire species it drives the price up even higher. Take the Coral Beauty dwarf angel, captive bread is $100.00 while wild are $45.00. Can some one explain why something that is designed to stop people from depleting the wild species from the oceans would cost the consumer hobbyist 2 times the amount to purchase?

 

[CasaReefer]

Good Question... I would say things like Over Head Cost. You have a building and the cost of that elec, gas, Maybe employees, Equipment, R&D figuring out how to get certain types of fish to get you know... " Busy".. The the cost of raise the fry to young adult at least old and strong enough to ship... Feed, Med's, Loss of livestock.

 

[najer]

I have a captive bred flame angel, she cost me twice as much as a wild.
A lot of time and money goes in to doing this for limited success but getting better.
I will have helped the breeder and I am happy with that.
England here, she is a very rare fish!

 

[mattzang]

my understanding without knowing anything about breeding fish, it's basically related to how difficult the fish is to breed. some fish aren't as difficult (egg layers) vs some fish that are more difficult (egg scatterers) so some fish just lay a bunch of eggs and it's easier for a person to collect those eggs (clownfish dottybacks blennies) and then there's fish that just scatter in the current of the tank. then there's how short the larval stage is and what not.

 

[Roberth101]

I understand overhead and i am not opposed to someone making a profit. But come on if a rare fish is in captivity and it breads and produces say 50 out of 300 offspring, other than the initial cost for permission to acquire does it really cost more to bread that over a common clown fish? I mean $2599.00 for a cuban basslet?
Understandable its a cuban fish. But there offspring born in the united states are not part of the embargo so the price should be considerably cheaper. IMHO.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I agree there should be an incentive to purchase captive bred species. Twice the price and color steers me to buying wild. How are we to preserve the fish in the wild with this encouragement.
the same applies to bars. . . . . There is beer for $3.00 a bottle. I rarely if ever drink due to my profession with licenses/certifications at stake. I will then ask if I want a beer for (NA) non-alcoholic and its the same price. Seems senseless to order a no alcohol when you can get the real McCoy for the same price. Where is the incentive to not drink other than sugary soda that's watered down in many cases?

 

[nereefpat]

Why are captive bred coral beauties more expensive?

1. It takes more inputs to breed and raise the angels then to simply pay someone in Indonesia to net one. The opposite is true for clownfish, or convict cichlids.

2. In this specific case, captive bred coral beauties are more rare, or have less supply, so people will pay more for them.

3. Some folks like to support aquaculture over wild caught.

 

[Thales]

Can some one explain why something that is designed to stop people from depleting the wild species from the oceans would cost the consumer hobbyist 2 times the amount to purchase?

Because it costs more money to create cultured fishes than it does to catch them.

Traditionally, wild caught is vastly underpriced due to incredibly cheap labor in third world countries and high pack (over pack) shipping to cut costs. A lot of the culturing of marine aquarium fishes is done using new equipment in first world countries, with much more generous accommodations during shipping.
It is hoped that costs of cultured marine fishes will drop over time as more is understood about how to culture these animals, and as facilities get over the start up hump.
Personally, I think the price of wild caught should go up asap.

 

[kichimark]

Many years back I raised clowns and was successful in raising several clutches. It did cost some to obtain extra tanks, filtration, LIVE food (that was always the challenge) and other things. It was fun for me and I gave some clowns away. I thought it was interesting to see my Picasso clowns develop platinum clowns, other picasso's and regular wild type colorations. I know back then the platinums were going for a couple hundred each and I am assuming with more folks breeding and the big operations like ORA are pumping them out like never before thus driving the price down.

This may be true with the cuban basslets you mention. They are indeed a beautiful fish but still rare I would assume thus demanding such a price. I am also sure they will go down in price once the market becomes more saturated. Patience is definitely a virtue.

But let's just say the price never goes down, what then? Why would someone still pay double the cost? For me it would be due to the captive bred fish likelihood of having less stress in a marine tank and possible diseases thus giving me less of a headache and in this sense worth the price if it was only double the cost from a wild specimen.

 

[Thales]

I understand overhead and i am not opposed to someone making a profit. But come on if a rare fish is in captivity and it breads and produces say 50 out of 300 offspring, other than the initial cost for permission to acquire does it really cost more to bread that over a common clown fish? I mean $2599.00 for a cuban basslet?
Understandable its a cuban fish. But there offspring born in the united states are not part of the embargo so the price should be considerably cheaper. IMHO.

The cost of broodstock isn't the only cost - the person who figured out how to breed those fish worked on it for years, and has decades of experience and neither of those are cheap. The market is small, expenses are high so it seems right that the people doing the work should try to profit from it.