ReefKeepingBasics.com

[Reef Tsunami]

 Social Responsibility

[Reef Tsunami]

 The cat got your tongue . . . ?

[Tangman99]

Well, I have a tank raised clown and my clams are aquacultured. My live rock did come from Fiji though.

[Tizzo]

When I first set up my tank, I did not know a lot of the "responsibility rules" so I believe I may have negatively contributed. But as the years progressed, and I started learning how easy it is to destroy our reefs, I did all that I could to not "invade" on them...

The place I buy my corals, is not really a LFS since there are not many fish, started his business with the unwated frags of hobbyists, and will not put a single thing in his store that is not aquacultured.

AS far as fish. THere is one particular LARGE fish store here in Charlotte, that I have bought 2 fish from. I know the signs of cyanide poisoning and I believe they both suffered from it. I will never be able to prove it, but the suspicion alone is enough to keep me out of that store permanantly.

Other than just brilliant color, cyanide poisoning consists of your fish eating viraciously and continuing to lose weight. I actually thought my fish had a parasitic worm. He ate, and ate and ate, but got thinner and thinner. When he finally died, I literally cut him in half to "investigate" his intestines, thinking I would definately find some kind of worms, and there were none... ( All in the name of research.)
And as far as cyanide, just because a fish is exposed, does not doom it to death. It has been used as an anesthetic for years. BUt the "medicinal" dose is very close to the lethal dose and thus fish will obviously get over exposed and die. BUT!!! There is NO medicinal dose for inverts or corals. Any amount of cyanide will kill them upon contact, which is the root reason I will not support a fish store that I suspect uses cyanide.
Your right Eric, this can be a "lively topic"...

[Reef Tsunami]

nice comments

[modelrr]

a majority of my corals were bought as frags from other people's tanks .. in fact .. pretty much all of them were

I'm also setting up two 30-35g acrylic tanks (slanted front; petsmart uses them) for raising my own frags (I'll be posting a thread when I start this project )

[caritarn]

how can you tell if cianide was used to catch the fish in the store. i understand that when you bring them home they eat and lose weight, but how can you tell in the store? is there a way? how do you know if a store is telling you the truth about how the fish were obtained or if they are tank raised fish or aquacultured inverts?

[Reef Tsunami]

that's a good question

[Tizzo]

Well, the inverts wouldn't qualify for cyanide since they would die on contact. Cyanide being used on the fish is complicated because it is used in a quirt bottle to target specific fish, the dose is "uncontrolled" and the many that are targeted, only a few will survive...and if the cyanide was released over a reef area, it will kill all of the corals, anemones, worms, and any other inverts.
Cyanide is mostly used in asia, and since it's used at all, most new hobbyists will blame cyanide collection for their fish's unexplained death. There are many many contributions to the stress level of a fish and many reasons for it to die, cyanide, is "not usually" to blame.
Fish collected with cyanide, will tend to have way to much color. The flame angel for example, is a brilliantly orange colored fish as it is, but due to the difficulty catching the animal, you will see more cyanide exposed angels.
You can ask your LFS where they buy their fish and ask for the number of the collection facility and you can call them yourself and ask their methods...
There really is no way of knowing just by looking at the fish.

[Reef Tsunami]

o.k. no point waiting