Fish and shrimp spawn in Hawaii

[alikatoes]

Aloha,
I am a collector of tropical fish in Hawaii, and I sometimes come across fish with eggs. When I see that I let them go, but I have brought some home on accident. Common fish are Bicolor Anthias, Lawnmower blennies. I also get Cleaner Shrimp, red banded, and ghost shrimp, with eggs, which I also let go, but was wondering if they could be spawned after pulling out of the wild. I have also heard little bits of info. about post larval culture. When I do night dives, I see tons of zooplankton, some being larval fish. Does anybody know if they can be raised for the trade?

[johnpoole]

must be nice to have a backyard with "free" shopping. can't help with your question. but i would try, in a solo use tank, with perfect conditions.. some fish lay 1000's of eggs for 3 or 4 to reach a mature parent. i (may get flamed) don't think you trying to improve those odds will unbalance nature...as ususal i am in the un-trained portion of this discussion

[ChaosReefer]

from what i understand, many of the aquatic life around hawaii is havin a rough time, so you would be helping out by doing so, so long as you dont do it to the point that ur put hundreds of thousands or even millions of living things back in that werent meant to survive, but doing it would certainly help so long as you dont go overboard, now that is assuming you wanna return them to the wild

If you are too sell them to a store, you are going to need proper liscences and have a rough legal battle, from what i understand collecting in hawaii is illegal unless it is for private use, or you have certain liscences and even then you can get in trouble, and if you do succeed be prepared to have a rough time selling the critters, and if you do succeed n selling them be prepared to get next to nothing for them

[FMarini]

there was a company awhile back that was doing exactly what you describe. They would catch post-larval fish in the zooplankton layers and raise them. (see the sticky thread at the top of the forum)
Not sure what happened to the comapny, but the cool thing was they raised all kinds of stuff, including buttferflies and trumpet fish. They sold thru FFE about 2yrs back

[GreshamH]

ECOMAY / ECOCEAN SAS
80 rue des Graves
34980 St Clement
France Sven M Lourie & Gilles Lecaillon
+ 33 4 67 67 02 84 ph/fx
ecocean_label@yahoo.com
www.ecocean.fr
AMDA member (where I grabbed they're contact info from)

Is this the comany your thinking off Frank? If so, they're still in business. I just got some of their "secret" 1mm and 2mm pellats that they use for grow out. I have yet to find any fish that won't eat it, well, mandarins

[RamPuppy]

Chaos, I have a friend living in hawaii who moved there last year, he has a collection license which allows him to snorkel and dive around the islands and collect fish and invertebrates for sale. Not everything is protected, much of it is, and some things have qoutas, like how much of X he can collect per day,

It Can be done legally if that is what he is interested in doing.

[GreshamH]

I think he's above board guys With a 1,200 gallon holding system and with marine fish collection as an occupation in his profile it kinda reaks of legal Especially in Hawaii.

[alikatoes]

I do have all the proper permitting, and I dont think I would have trouble selling the cleaner or harlequin shrimp.

Thanks for the link, that is what I have been looking for!