How do aquariums get their fish

Davdhole

Well-Known Member
5+ year member
Didn't mean for a post so soon after another, but my silky shark question recently sparked another wonder. Does anyone know how aquariums get fish, specifically pelagic and larger reef fish? I know animals like tangs and other smaller reef fish, likely several species of freshwater fish, and smaller sharks like zebras and wobbegongs come from other aquariums or facilities that breed and sell fish to aquariums and zoos. What about fish like jack, tarpon, sand tigers, hammerheads, larger grouper species, trevally, etc? I've honestly never heard of those types of fish being bred in captivity and given to other places. Excuse the lack of info, I'm more of a terrestrial animal person and my knowledge of those animals and zoos is greater than marine life and such.
 
I am not an expert but I think a lot (perhaps most) public aquarium animals are wild caught (with the exception of marine mammals). It is kind of odd that if zoos were to continue to gather animals from the wild (which they do not except under rare circumstances) there would be a public outcry. But when aquariums gather fish from the wild no one seems to mind. (I use "no one" as an exaggeration as I imagine there are some animal activists that oppose it).
 
Ok here is what I know,
Smaller fish are farmed in Indonesia, there are some exceptions like Clowns which have breeding centers in places like New York. But mainly smaller fish are farmed and then shipped to the US usually through Los Angeles. Many aquariums or aquarium companies get fish from a place in LA called underwater world which intercepts fish imports from Indonesia.
The larger species are caught but I will say there is a blurred line between which sharks are and are not caught and instead farmed. Reef sharks (black and white) exist frequently in the private aquaria trade so it is not out of the picture that they aren't at least farmed.
 
I believe most freshwater species in zoos/aquariums are captive bred, but some rarer species are wild caught. For saltwater, some species, like clownfish, Banggai Cardinalfish, some gobies, smaller sharks and rays are available captive bred, but the vast majority are wild caught. There are some large suppliers like the aforementioned Underwater World and Cairns Marine, which either buy animals off other collectors or collect them themselves, who supply both public aquariums and the private trade.
Cairns Marine
Underwater World
 
Zoos had to start somewhere and figure out how to keep each species properly and manage to breed them so they no longer relied on wild caught specimens
It seemed like zoos have slept very very long on sustainability when it came to fish species, but reptiles and ampibian were also overlooked

I have asked myself these question too and have found and since followed several sources

some to mention are

LIST OF ANIMAL SPECIES USED IN AQUACULTURE

CORAL Magazine's Captive-Bred Marine Aquarium Fish List - Project Homepage

also check out
ZootierlisteHomepage
go to fish and click on the different institutions
tho not allways given the plattform managed to note several breeding succes that are mentioned with the german word zucht or nachzucht


The first breedings succes did not necessarily meant that we cracked the code but the data can be studied even if the hatch was not even plan prehand and therefor monitored from the start

Today we have some institutions that try theie best to find a sustainable enviorment friendly path to establish captive populations for these species
whilw other parks still one could say consume these less regulated animals
sadly the later seem to be a the majority and even big institutions seemed to manage the care and coordination rather unprofessional

I found the tanks at the national aquarium of denmark dem bla planet neither designed properly for the inhabitants nor the amount of species kept at each tank

But not just fish need to be included in the masterplan of the zoological world
but equally invertebrates
 
Hi, okay, I literally created an account, because I could not leave this thread like this.

First of all: don't use Zootierliste for fish. It's the one thing that is actually bad. If you want to determine, whether there is an elasmobranch species present, fine. But not for numbers, breeding events or exchanges. First of all the teleost species are not accurate, don't get changed often enough and since most of the records are created by people visiting, are fairly inaccurate. Fish mainly have activity periods throughout the day and there are never all species seen when a person goes by one time. Tanks are also very complex these days and its so easy to just overlook an individual. Also, with aquariums backstage holding is so much more important. You can't raise the fish in the display tanks, so they basically don't know of any offspring, if it didn't have a press release.

I can only speak for European aquariums, but corals are well oragnised and are never sourced from the wild by now. Same goes for anemones and almost all jelly species. There are two species that are fairly new in European collections generally and I'm unsure where they got their founders.

Freshwater fish are by now almost exclusively bred. What you need to understand here is that the hobby aquarists are well-organised in unions and interest groups and so on throughout Europe. The center of that is actually Germany/Netherlands/Austria, but most countries have some sort of organisation. It's not difficult to get most species to breed and hobbyists have so much pride in the upbringing that they do a really good job. Since it's also easier then with salt-water fish, it's good business and a handful of professional dealers offer many tank bred animals (often declared as ENZ (eigene Nachzucht, the German term for self-bred, which is just the established way.)) There is quiet the healthy exchange between public aquariums and hobbyists, especially through citizen conservation projects. For example all Zoogoneticus tequila (extinct in the wild) that are in aquariums came through a privately organized studbook of sorts.

Now for elasmobranchs, thats a different story. Many species are already successfully bred and raised, like zebra sharks, eagly rays, blacktip reef sharks, and especially the smaller species (bamboo shark, masked rays, etc.) Some species still pose a challenge, because either the breeding cue wasn't identififed yet or raising the offspring poses a challenge. So it is possible that aquariums actively decide to catch new animals once they figure that out to increase the number of founders and genetic diversity.

Now for the most difficult part: The reef fish. This is a big issue, but it's completely different than what you might expect. Many species actually reproduce, but are never raised. First of all, it's very difficult to obtain the spawn from the big display tanks, since the life support systems (filtration) are designed to remove organic matter before it spoils the water. And gametes and larvae are organic matter. Most of these larvae are also planctonic. It's incredibly difficult and time consuming and unpleasent to look at. I once worked for a public aquarium, where we really wanted to do that because the species that spawned was super in demand, but we would have had to raise the ticket prices by 200%. For something people can't see and don't care about.

There are a few companies that are successful in breeding and raising these species. In Europe DeJong Marinelife is the very best example. They offer many tank bred species, while also catching individuals sustainably. The tank bred animals often cost about three times the price. But and here is the literal catch: it is possible to catch ornamental fish sustainably in the wild. It depends on skills, populations that you catch from and acclimatisation. But DeJong's philisophy is to offer only tank bred individuals within the next few decades. And they are getting close to it. They are also starting to breed groupers, elasmobranchs and so on.

Some marine teleost species are actually easy to breed and raise and are bred within the aquariums, but those are always the ones with some form of brood care, where the larvae then won't enter the filtration system.

I can of course not account for every aquarium within Europe, but the ones that are lead by scientific principles do a really good job. And just because they buy some species wild caught, doesn't mean it's unsustainable or harmful.

I will also take a wild guess how this question came up: there is a new "revelation documentary" out from the producers that also produced blackfish. The basic premise is that anyone that buys fish destroys the coral reefs.
 
This topic was discussed few years ago already...

Not mentioned are fish farms in the tropics, which increasingly breed sea fish for meat and pets, and also supply zoos.

About documentaries - BBC also made more than one documentary of things like close-ups of faces of dead fish in nets etc. Did not change public perception much.
 
This topic was discussed few years ago already...

Not mentioned are fish farms in the tropics, which increasingly breed sea fish for meat and pets, and also supply zoos.

About documentaries - BBC also made more than one documentary of things like close-ups of faces of dead fish in nets etc. Did not change public perception much.
I don’t think you understand the effect Blackfish had on people. The film swayed people so much it was taught in schools even though much of it was incorrect and biased. These film makers know how to get the attention of people so don’t underestimate them.
 
I don’t think you understand the effect Blackfish had on people. The film swayed people so much it was taught in schools even though much of it was incorrect and biased. These film makers know how to get the attention of people so don’t underestimate them.

Just what I wanted to say. And also: if people watch an hour long documentary about the ocean and there are a few minutes about fishes in nets, it's very different from an hour of "the reefs are dying because if fish keepers"
 
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