Aaron Norman
A. ocellaris are tank-raised in large numbers for the aquarium hobby. This one has an abnormal pattern.
favor and resist the urge to buy that
damsel or clownfish on the same
day it arrives. If you’re concerned
that another customer will buy the
specimen you want in the meantime,
ask the dealer whether you can put
down a little earnest money to hold the
specimen for a few days so you can be
sure it’s healthy.
Resist Those Tiny
Discount Damsels!
It’s quite common for aquarium stores
to offer very small damselfishes
for sale at just a few dollars apiece.
While these prices may seem like an
excellent deal, those tiny discount
damsels are really not such a hot
bargain, after all—a truth that I had to
learn the hard way.
Some years ago I was stocking a new
marine aquarium and decided that
a school of six blue-green chromis,
Chromis viridis, would be a great way
to introduce some activity and color to
the tank. Imagine my delight when I
discovered that a dealer in my area was
offering blue-green chromis for the
low, low price of just $1.99 each. They
had just arrived that day, and I was first
in line to buy them! How could I resist?
Sure, they were only about a half inch
( 1 cm) in length, but they would grow,
right? Besides, the larger specimens in
an adjacent tank cost twice as much!
TFH Archives
myself. I’ve got five chromis left—still
enough for a small school. The next day,
however, I was down to four. The day
after that, only two remained. And then,
the following morning, there were none.
The lesson I learned from that
disappointing loss, one that has
been confirmed many times by the
experiences of other hobbyists, is
that undersized damsels, however
desirably priced they may be, have
an absolutely abysmal survival rate
because they are simply not resilient
enough to endure the rigors of
capture, shipping, and handling.
Buy Captive-Bred Clownfishes
On the freshwater side of the
aquarium hobby, the vast majority of
specimens sold on the market are bred
commercially. But just the opposite is
true on the marine side of the hobby.
The number of species that are still
wild caught far exceeds the number
of those that are captive bred on a
commercial scale.
There’s a good reason that so few
marine fishes are being bred in
captivity. The eggs and tiny larvae
of most reef fishes go through a
prolonged pelagic stage, during which
they drift over many miles of sea with
the planktonic rafts. Eventually they
reach a stage of development at which
they are ready to settle on a coral reef.
This reproductive strategy has the
obvious advantage of distributing a
species over a very wide range. But, as
you might imagine, it also creates lots
of headaches for aspiring breeders
because little is known about how
to sustain such minuscule larvae
during this long pelagic stage. Even
culturing a food small enough to fit
into the tiny mouths of these larvae
is problematic. On the other hand,
many of the clownfishes are now being
commercially bred on a routine basis.
Tropical Fish Hobbyist www.tfhmagazine.com
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