Cyanide caught fish....in our area?

[Tenner]

Hello all,

In June of 2000 Keith Redfield was kind enough to speak at one of our club meetings. Keith was Director of the "GoodFish Project" at Ecovitality.

Keith was importing and selling certified net caught fish to our LFS's in an effort to fight the use of cyanide.

I had heard Keith was selling some of his equipment but didn't think too much about it. I remember reading an email about his project closing down.

Last week I purchased four small fish from a LFS (remain unnamed). After one week three of them have died. This prompted me to start thinking about Keith's project again. Not that I have anyway to know if the fish I purchased were caught by using cyanide or not.

I was sadened when I went to his site and got an update on the "GoodFish Project".

Please check out the following link.
http://www.ecovitality.org/cyanide.htm

Just thought I would pass the info along.

Thanks
Matthew

[anathema]

It's a fact that price has a lot of affect on how conscientious we are. I am always looking for deals, as in this thread:

http://archive.reefcentral.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84067&highlight=cherubfish

but I think I should have passed this fish up. It has simply disappeared, and was very weak when I put it in the tank. I haven't seen it, and it will be 2 weeks Wednesday. :(

Maybe a good meeting topic would be a description of cyanide caught fish. It could tie in with the coral health meeting I suggested in the other thread.

Is Keith available to speak at a meeting in the future? I am sure that he would have an interesting presentation.

[darcitananda]

Cyanide caught fish may be cheaper, but they also have more long-term (or shall we say short-term) health problems, making them less likely to survive in our tanks. So, in reality, we pay more if we end up losing fish and replacing them more frequently.

My opinion is that pretty much all of our LFS's sell cyanide caught fish, whether they know it/admit it or not. I, personally, have decided only to buy captive raised fish from this point on. Sometimes you can even get them for cheap or free if you know someone who has success raising them.

Until we DEMAND that LFS's stop buying cyanide caught fish, they will continue to do so. The reefs are being destroyed at an alarming rate. I hope that they will be here for my children to see, not just in a tank in a living room.

[RustySnail]

Darci Wrote:

>My opinion is that pretty much all of our LFS's sell cyanide >caught fish, whether they know it/admit it or not.

This is very true. A big part of the reason we have difficulty 'acclimating' a fish to our home aquariums is because of residual damage from cyanide capture. It can take a couple of months before a fish dies after exposure to cyanide. They will eat and look healthy, etc. also.

I can't offer any suggestions as to how to be assured that a fish is healthy, but there are a couple of things that can be done to help be sure that a purchased fish is going to be worth the risk of buying.

Observe the fish closely. Be sure it is alert and it should be actively looking for food or 'begging' to be fed. Shyness is OK as long as the fish maintains an alertness about it's environment.

Ask the store salesman to feed the fish. If it will not eat, don't buy it.


Make sure the fish looks healthy, nice and plump with no sunken belly. Fish that have that 'flat as a pankake' look are too severely starved and it is highly unlikely they will survive.

If you are still unsure about the fish, ask the store owner to hold it in quarrantine for you for a couple of weeks. This way you can make sure that it maintains it's health, and if all is right it will look better when you buy it than when you first looked at it.

Quarrantine the fish for 3-4 weeks at home. If it dies suddenly, (even from parasites) you can ask for an exchange/refund because it did not die from some unknown reason. Be firm about this, stores should take the losses for ALL cyanide caught fish, which will force more pressure to get rid of it's use.

The best thing you can do is buy captive raised fish (esp. clownfish, dottybacks, cleaner shrimps, etc.) Unfortunately the vast majority of SW fish availabe are not captive bred (yet) due to the way they reproduce (via planktonic larvae).

The practice of using cyanide to catch SW fish will not likely end in the near term. Until some sort of chemical test is invented to measure a fish's exposure we have no way to determine cyanide poisoning. Aside from boycotting wild caught fish (which could lead to a more broad importation ban), the best weapon against it is being highly selective, and forcing the seller to take the loss when we lose something due to poison/poor initial health.

Russ