Can We At Least Talk About Captive Breeding Defects?

[Reef Builders]

If a farmer grows a certain quantity of produce like fruits or vegetables, they can’t reasonably expect that every single fruit will be of sellable quality. The same principle applies to farmers that cultivate livestock, or pet breeders that raise birds or cats or dogs, and it’s long past time we start expecting a similar…
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[blaxsun]

"Slighting the Church of Captive Bred Fish". Good one, lol. The captive bred yellow tangs look anorexic...

 

[adsf430]

Add in the pi$$ poor colors on captive bred royal grammas

 

[CoralNerd]

If a farmer grows a certain quantity of produce like fruits or vegetables, they can’t reasonably expect that every single fruit will be of sellable quality. The same principle applies to farmers that cultivate livestock, or pet breeders that raise birds or cats or dogs, and it’s long past time we start expecting a similar…
Source

Continue reading...

If they can breed clownfish with dollar signs like the one Ali had I'll buy one lol

 

[sante21079]

Finally!! I am looking for a wild caught maroon clown for this reason. The quality of captive bread clownfish has been deteriorating.

 

[Utubereefer]

"Slighting the Church of Captive Bred Fish". Good one, lol. The captive bred yellow tangs look anorexic...

I don’t like the look of captive bred tangs either but I’ve been told as they mature you can’t tell the difference. I do like the idea of not pulling a fish from its home on the reef. I’m willing to put up with a skinny translucent tang for a little while till it grows up

 

[Largeangels]

Great article. Some of the tank bred clownfish are horrible and I don't see many good ones.

 

[Hawaii hobbyist]

"Slighting the Church of Captive Bred Fish". Good one, lol. The captive bred yellow tangs look anorexic...

Don’t worry, sustainable wild caught from the best managed aquarium fishery in the world Will be back very soon

 

[blaxsun]

Don’t worry, sustainable wild caught from the best managed aquarium fishery in the world Will be back very soon

Time will tell. We’ve been letting the lunatics run the asylum for the past few years and now we’ve officially handed some of them the keys.

 

[Bouncingsoul39]

I’m really happy to see Jake address this captive elephant in the room. I haven’t been here for a while and spend most of my time on Reddit. We have a reef sub there and every week someone has a captive clown with some issue or another. I made a comment about issues with Sea and Reef Clowns and how bad they are.
Im trying to spread the word that not all captive bred clowns (or as Jake mentions others) are good quality out there like they should be considering they’re captive bred. Over the last few years, Sea and Reef have undercut all the competition and flooded the market with low quality deformed clowns. A reputable breeder would have culled these fish and never let them go to market.
ORA has been complacent, resting on their laurels as their clown sales dry up losing Petco as a customer and many LFS as well. Where your clowns come from matters. Don’t assume that just because they’re captive bred that they are good quality!

 

[Tamberav]

Add in the pi$$ poor colors on captive bred royal grammas

Really? The colors look the same to me. The good assessors look dull though. Not sure if they ever color up or what.

 

[Tamberav]

As far as captive bred clowns go. It is best to avoid mass produced ones and go to a small yet responsible breeder. Really happy with my 7 yr old pair that now spawns from
Booyah and I also follow Vossen Aquatics. Certainly ask for WYSIWYG and don’t accept deformed clowns from any source.

Unfortunately those new to the hobby don’t know to look for pug nose, pinched heads, flared gills, small fins and so on… I imagine that is where many new clowns end up too since they are Nemo’s and hardy and recommended for those new to the hobby.

The same thing happens with cats and dogs. We call them back yard breeders. You know… the type that don’t test for genetic defects and are cheap and can be found on Craigslist. The animals are sometimes missing papers since buying papered parents would cost more for them.

 

[Tamberav]

Oh and as far as Tangs go. I saw the first batch of Tangs produced in person. The Tangs have improved a lot. I am sure it’s not easy and hopefully all the kinks will get worked out and they won’t settle on subpar tangs like some have with clowns.

I recently purchased a captive bred marine betta which is produced by a small breeder (but sold to biota) and am very happy with the this fish. I can’t not see any sort of deformities and it eats.

 

[brahm]

I was a early adopter of captive fish and an ORA dealer back in the days. Those early fish looked great, but woah did wild true percs pop when ever I would go to Walt Smith to pick up our SPS. I have mccullochi now and tbh i was a bit iffy on them at first, now a year old are looking better but they don’t have the pop the wild ones do. They are also clearly misbars in the old days ORA would
Label and discount misbars, you had to request them. Not sure why they being sold as normal stock now. All photos of wild mccullochi ive seen only have a single stripe but most of the capative ones have two or one and a partial.

If/when I chase down some latz , it seems like wild is the only way to go. Captive are still $ but look more like Sebea then latz… hard to justify 600-700 on a fish that looks like a 18$ fish
wild

Captive

If i had to guess they are mixing species which is why the rarer clownfish look more like a mix of latz & sebea or mccullochi and clarkii than 100% of the rarer species

 

[miyags]

They bred the glowing pumpkin orange and glowing red/orange color,out of clownfish, for pattern..They are all dull colored now.

 

[N.Sreefer]

This problem may solve itself in horticulture we line breed plants for many successive generations and they don't suffer inbreeding depression the same way animals do. It took large populations of auroch to create the modern cow (large varied genepool) and my theory is most captive bred breeders do not have enough stock to keep breeding the way they are without continuing to add genetics from wild stock. Its not sustainable the way they're doing it because they will end up with sterile individuals due to a bunch of harmful partially recessive alleles. They aren't following any of the breeding principals we abide by in farm animal husbandry. Theres far to much back breeding.