Are wild caught worth the extra?

[madmoroccan]

Hi all,

This post is for the new members thinking about buying L046...

A quick tip that I am shocked nobody has pointed out, with regards to purchasing "wild caught" Zebras:

1) It is unethical. NOT ILLEGAL! Once they leave Brazil it is the buyer's responsibility to walk away. Purchase in any country outside Brazil is completely legal till L046 become endangered (correct me if I am wrong).

2) This is usually not true, the seller will lie to bump up prices. These are usually F1> (Born in a tank).

3) Even if the fish are wild caught, you will struggle with them simply because wild caught fish don't acclimatise to tank conditions very easily and you will end up losing a chunk of your money with the ones that die during acclimatisation.

This information is accurate, the only people that are likely to disagree are those who own wild caught zebras with comments like; "Their colours are much brighter." This is a myth and I need to see concrete evidence to back this up. So far I have been convinced this a lie to raise value.

The poll is running for 1 week... So hurry and get your vote in!

[dave]

Would love to reply to the poll, but as reasons have been placed next to the answers it is difficult.

Firstly colouration. As the owner of wild, tank bred (my own) and having purchased F1's from other sources I see no difference at all in colour intensity, a variation in pattern yes.

As for acclimatisation. If they are recently imported, hence illegally exported I have no experience of this. Only recently a member of this site sold his wild colony. Perhaps the recipients of these fish could confirm whether fish arrived stressed, somehow I doubt it, when I purchased mine, even after travelling overnight they were fine. This is a total different proposition to fish of any species exported then sold on without a period of acclimatisation, always likely to be fatalities.

As to the value of a wild fish, there are plenty sitting around in community tanks, in fact my LFS shop manager is helping me track down some owners.

1 Wild = 1 F1, in my mind 4 Wild + 4 F1's from different sources, as the product of breeding either group of 4 would be more F1's.

Dave

[Raul-7]

They're are illegal to export, IBAMA confiscated 290 specimens from a smuggler trying to get them out of the country.

http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... 3&start=60

[madmoroccan]

@Dave

Your response an observations are kindly valued. I have tried to change the poll to remove the statements... but as you may or may not be aware once you submit the poll it can't be edited.

@Raul

Indeed it is illegal to export them from Brazil. But I have stated that once out of Brazil they are not illegal to buy. Although I might like to add that the chances of bieng offered "real wild caught" L046 is very slim. This can be very difficult to prove. An export certificate would not necessarily be good evidence as this is illegal IN BRAZIL.

I would welcome any further comments on the subject. These are only opinions and views. I am hoping that by stimulating discussion on the topic there might be some fresh insight into the merits of purchasing L046 that are advertised as "wild caught".

Kind Regards

Bader

[discusbabe]

I too can't vote on the poll as I don't fit into any of the categories! Personally unless I knew that wc zeb was actually wc for sure I would not entertain it, I haven't seen f1 and wc next to each other so haven't that option to compare them! I've seen them seperately though and have not noticed a difference.

If there wasn't a ban and I had the option of the two though I would be happier to go with f1 I must say from my experience of keeping wild and f1 fish of other species.

[Sojapat]

I think that there is little difference in the 2 ..to look at..
The only problem I can see is that already people seem to be trying to buy groups of F1 FROM THE SAME PARENTAGE!!!
Dave from Liverpool is talking a lot of sense ..
F1 will not know the wild .Temperature,Lighting,Water parameters.
So is a better fish ..
Please if you are going to buy these fish buy from different sources..
6 or 10 brothers and sisters is not the way forward.. :arrow:

[Adam]

Personally I can't see that there is any notable difference between my Wild caught adults and their tank bred offspring. If there is likely to be any difference it will likely be with potential size but that remains to be seen. I can understand why Wild caught zebras command a higer price than tank breds, however I beleive that you are more likely to succeed with breeding attempts using tank bred zebras. I agree with both Dave and Sojapat here, a tank bred fish knows only of a captive life and is less likely to require the same sort of stimulation to spawn as it's wild counterpart.

As an example we have a member here who purchased tank bred zebras from multiple German breeders and they then went on to spawn for him in a relatively short time. In fact he was fortunate enough to have multiple males spawning in the same tank.

There really is no basis for the continued argument that Wild caughts are best. All that this continued misconception does is to place unbearable strain on the wild population in the form of illegal collection. Unfortunately supply and demand also has a large part to play in the continued exploitation of wild specimens. I honestly beleive that no amount of "education" will resolve this problem. The only way forward as I see it is for H. zebra to be given CITES status, unfortunately this is probably years away by which time it may already be too late for the wild population.

As stated, so long as siblings are not interbred and that effort is made to preserve the gene pool with the mating of non-related fish then there shouldn't be a problem.

@ Madmoroccan, I could't really answer the poll. I don't think that the extortionate prices being commanded by the few wild caughts out there is intentional. Their rarity pretty much dictates the prices they currently fetch. As stated I can't see that there is any visible difference between WC and TB.

Regards.

Adam