Wild caught fish

[CFC]

I still dont belive it, look around on the net, also one of the lakes is protected, cant remember witch it is tho, all cichlids here in aus are tank breed no matter what people say. you see pics on the net with these guys who have these large nets with millions of eletric yellows in them and so on, but yet they call them "wild caught" but yet these fish have never seen a rock in there life. Why would a shop pay so much money for a wild caught fish when they can sell the same one breed in a tank for much much less?

Ah your in Australia, no wonder you dont see many wild caught fish then, most of them are banned from being imported into your country, i was helping someone a while back who wanted to find some nice predatory oddballs and catfish and we found a list which contained about 100 species of fish and they were the only ones allowed into the country. I should imagine that virtually all the fish in the australian hobby are farm or captive bred.
Here in England we have virtually no restrictions on the fish we are allowed to import and own since they could not survive the winter if released, the only fish we are banned from having are coldwater ones. Because of this we get a huge range of fish to choose from of which a great number are wild caught, we get BIG predatory catfish, FW stingrays, predatory characins like wolf fish, payara and FW baracuda, bichirs and many more fish that you Australians would have to have smuggled into the country and pay thousands of dollars for (i know of a few people who have paid in excess of $1000 for fish like tiger shovel noses and redtailed catfish).

The lake that is now protected is lake victoria BTW.

 

[aloaring]

I remember reading a magazine article that for many villages by the edge of lake malawi the capturing of tropical fish is their main source of income and because of this it encourages them to look after their environment and the fish so to keep the business sustainable!! and this is true for most areas where wild fish are caught. The only problems I see with wild caught fish is whether they can cope with such dramatic changes in their environment that captive bred fish would be used to. Otherwise I have no problems with having wild caught fish.

 

[CFC]

Yes the same thing works with the villagers of the people living along the banks of the amazon and its tributaries, they are now being taught to collect and hold tropical fish for export to Europe and North America for a income rather then cutting down the rain forest for agriculture and the timber trade. The waters of the amazon basin are so vast (in places the rivers are over a mile wide!) and so teeming with fish life that it is unlikely that this small scale fishing could ever deplete the fish stocks.

 

[patchwork_python]

I only knowlingly buy WC if they are rare in the trade or are threatened due to pollution or habitat loss in the wild, as I believe alot of killifish are, for example? And only then, if I can get enough males and females to breed with. Wouldn't buy a single fish.

I saw some WC kribs for sale and I don't agree with that as there are plenty being captive bred. Not sure how I feel about L-number Plecs. I love them, but didn't realise majority were wild caught. You often only see one or two in the same shop, would be much better if you had the money and the space to try and set up a breeding colony. There was a shop I went to had 4 zebra plecs in, £40 each, a guy came in the day after they arrived and bought the lot to try and breed them!