what are your thoughts on wild-caught aquarium pets? I love the look of ghost catfish but i was put off when I read they're almost all wild caught.
most of my fish are wild caught. it's not really a black and white issue, a lot of fish that are wild caught are sustainably captured by locals in order to provide income, such as Project Piaba and clown loach collection. also, some wild caught fish come from threatened habitats, where if they're not pulled from the wild and kept by institutions or the super niche hobbyists, then they'll be lost to habitat destruction, such as wild Bettas and licorice gouramis. also, there's some hobbyists who go and fund their own collection trips, so they're not taking thousands of fish at a time, but a few specimens they want to bring back into the hobby.
on the other hand, there's a lot of poaching, over collection and frankly stupid collection of fish. there are fish that just don't do well in captivity, such as ansorgii mudfish, a cryptic species from the Congo that are essentially imported to die. there are knife fish that go through this, there are schooling fish that go through this, a lot of it boils down to rare fish keepers wanting to have the coolest and rarest of fish which isn't how I approach fish keeping.
I didn't even mention fucking corals but oh my god. I want people to stop buying wild collected corals which are doomed to die in their tanks because most corals have a high rate of die off. It sucks. I hate it. It breaks my heart. I don't buy corals anymore unless I know they came from an existing colony in the shop or someone's collection.
as far as commercially bred aquarium fish, you have a different set of problems; lack of healthy culling leads to behavior issues and health problems, we have bred super bugs into the aquarium hobby such as ich and iridovirus that are difficult or impossible to treat. the overuse of antibiotics leads to more treatment resistant bacterial infections. I tend to prefer hobbyist bred fish when I can get them, or I get a specific fish from a guy that's going out there and doing collection trips. but I've also pretty much stopped doing that too, and I am thinking of just shifting over into picking up fish donated to the LFS I go to (how I got my moonlight gouramis and how I got my armatus eel, Belt).
exotic pet keeping as we know it has its roots in colonialism so there's a lot of accepting some demons into your home if you choose to make peace with them.
