Mandarin Fish Harvest Realities

Oxylebius

Oxylebius

Well-Known Member
Article: Mandarin Fish Harvest Realities
http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2008/03/04/mandarin-harvest-realities/

From the article...
"An urgent rationale for captive breeding of these popular fishes."

"They are collected by using a mini-spear gun to fire long, double pronged, sewing needles into the side of the fish. Aimed at the belly or the tail. This is a widespread technique for collecting mandarins and is not isolated to any particular region."

"When speared in the posterior portion of the body, and assuming the spears do not damage vertebrae, there are no long term consequences. Missing vertebrae and visceral punctures, however, create immediate or delayed risk of mortality."



:( But, How do they know that spearing through the belly ends up with no long term damage! As soon as they spear them in the belly, they ship them off before they know if any long-term problems arise from it. There is a very HIGH mortality rate of these in our tanks! IS it b/c of being speared through the belly? That belly is full of organs!
 
cracker

cracker

Well-Known Member
Wow Oxy, That article has a lot of shock to it for sure. Regardless of how factual it is,any research/efforts to captive breed these beautiful fish and all other saltwaters is very important! I have great hope and confidence that in the future, we will be breeding and raising salt fishes like we do freshwater fishes.
There is" no way " that spearing a fish is OK! It's a two edged sword. We as reef keepers supply the demand. Yet it's " us" who will figure out how to breed and raise them.
 
D

DaveK

Well-Known Member
First, note the date of the article, March 2008, over 7 years ago. I have to say that I'm a bit skeptic of the article.This is mostly because I don't know of any other SW fish collected by "mini-spear guns". Consider that there are many similar species and they don't seem to be collected this way. Also the slurp gun for collecting has been around for years, and would seem to work in this application as well, and not risk damage to the fish. If the fish was captured with a "mini- spear gun" we'd see a lot of damaged fish right from the start.

Also, the area being collected was the Philippines, an area also noted for the wise spread use of cyanide for collecting. In other words an area of the world not noted for protecting it's coral reefs, although things do seem to be getting better.

I would contend that the high mortality rates for this fish are due to it's feeding requirement not being met.

There are a lot of cruel aspects in the aquarium trade, most of them have to do with the way the fish are collected.

Personally, I'm more worried about the mandarins collected that we kill because they are sold to people that don't know how to take care of them.

As for captive breeding, I also hope that we will see better results, but it's very difficult, and there will always be a lot of species that can only be obtained the hard way by collecting them.
 
Paul B

Paul B

Well-Known Member
Actually mandarins are a very easy fish to breed. If correctly fed they will spawn continuously. Most people just don't want to spend the time getting them into breeding condition by just feeding them and what they need to eat is any "live" food. Not pellets. They will live and spawn nicely on new born brine shrimp. I have been keeping them for decades and they always are pregnant. I don't have the time to raise the fry or a seperate tank to do it in but they are as hard, or as easy as any other fish. It just takes a little time, room and patience.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top