• Why not take a moment to introduce yourself to our members?

Wes

Advanced Reefer
Location
Raleigh, NC
Rating - 100%
6   0   0
jaa1456 said:
Tank bred are good and they should be kept as they were found. Not inbred and having the same genes for generations. I think the lightning clown is a wild inbred clown, Notice you have only found 2 and not hundreds of them, because in the wild inbreeding is usually kept at a minimum. While captive fish are bred however the breeder wants to.

How do you know inbreeding is kept to a minimum in the wild? I think it's quite the opposite. A clutch of clownfish will live together in a colony. They are all brothers and sisters. What do you think happens when they reach sexual maturity?

Everything you eat is "inbred".

This discussion is silly.


Sent from my iPhone using Reefs
 

DHaut

Advanced Reefer
Location
Brooklyn
Rating - 100%
36   0   0
Wes gets it. Also, ORA or anyone isn't going to breed clownfish if they don't sell. If they "go out of style" they won't be bred anymore. And putting clownfish up for adoption because people don't want them anymore? Seriously? I'm all for that - anyone have a Grade A Picasso pair they're tired of? I'll take it off your hands for free.
 

DHaut

Advanced Reefer
Location
Brooklyn
Rating - 100%
36   0   0
No, they don't end up in shelters. They end up being released into the wild.

what? how this is relevant to the discussion? any fish can be released into the wild. this is an argument for banning all fish from the hobby, not against selective breeding.
 

fernandokng

Advanced Reefer
Rating - 100%
65   0   0
Wes,

We are all here thanks to evolution, and I'm sure inbreeding happened in the early days, and even today. Regardless whether inbred is good or bad, if you let nature take its course, then that's fine.

But the issue is not about natural inbreeding. The issue is selective inbreeding driven by humans. Here, humans are intervening with nature, in ways that seem un natural. Sure, you can find many instances where human does intervene with nature and we are all at a benefit. (Breeding cows so we can have meat, genetic enhancing agriculture so we can feed more people, etc.) But then again, not every situation is the same, and just because it's good in some cases, doesn't mean it's good in all cases. I don't see what ORA is doing now benefits anyone/nature in the larger scheme of things. People have already made clear, they are doing it for a profit (collectibles). I really doubt they are pushing the boundaries to help the greater common good.

It just seems they are being socially irresponsible.

How do you know inbreeding is kept to a minimum in the wild? I think it's quite the opposite. A clutch of clownfish will live together in a colony. They are all brothers and sisters. What do you think happens when they reach sexual maturity?

Everything you eat is "inbred".

This discussion is silly.


Sent from my iPhone using Reefs
 
Last edited:

DHaut

Advanced Reefer
Location
Brooklyn
Rating - 100%
36   0   0
I know I'm not Wes, but here's my thoughts:

Wes,
But the issue is not about natural inbreeding. The issue is selective inbreeding driven by humans. Here, humans are intervening with nature, in ways that seem un natural.

Again, this doesn't prove that selective breeding is wrong. What philosophical system are you using to back up your claim that there is a natural vs. unnatural way to intervene with nature?

Wes,
But then again, not every situation is the same, and just because it's good in some cases, doesn't mean it's good in all cases. I don't see what ORA is doing now benefits anyone/nature in the larger scheme of things.

Doesn't it benefit those that receive enjoyment for purchasing an ORA clown? And again, how does this entire hobby benefit anyone/nature in the larger scheme of things apart from providing humans with greater pleasure? What little is done in the aqua/mariculture world is more than offset by the massive amount of things taken from the wild and put into the glass boxes in our homes, all for our pleasure. This doesn't look like it'll change anytime soon either. If anything, every captive-bred clown produced (by ORA or anyone else) could potentially take the place of a wild-caught clown, and reduce the strain on the environment.

People have already made clear, they are doing it for a profit (collectibles). I really doubt they are pushing the boundaries to help the greater common good.

It just seems they are being socially irresponsible.

Of course it's for a profit. But that's only because there's a demand for the clowns by hobbyists who will get pleasure from owning them. And if ORA earning a profit means they can reinvest that profit in other advancements, such as the captive-bred mandarins, then I only see the profit as a good thing. Also, define "greater common good." Are you talking about utilitarianism? Because in that case ORA is increasing pleasure of hobbyists and decreasing pain of wild-caught clowns. Seems pretty socially responsible in my book. Or do you have some other definition of the "common good?"
 

fernandokng

Advanced Reefer
Rating - 100%
65   0   0
Again, this doesn't prove that selective breeding is wrong.

Never said selective breeding was wrong. I gave many examples in where selective breeding has benefited others at the larger scale.

What philosophical system are you using to back up your claim that there is a natural vs. unnatural way to intervene with nature?

I think we can all agree that inbreeding has inherent issues. What I see unnatural is when a company decides to take fish and inbreed them, fully knowing the side effects. Personally, I can only argue for them if I see a benefit to the greater good.

We all have definition of "benefit to the greater good". In my discussion, I define a benefit to the greater good as something that has significant/larger scale impact to the population.

Doesn't it benefit those that receive enjoyment for purchasing an ORA clown?

Personal enjoyment to me is not the same benefit I am referring to. On the other hand, Captive Breeding to help reduce overfishing is a significant benefit.


And again, how does this entire hobby benefit anyone/nature in the larger scheme of things apart from providing humans with greater pleasure? What little is done in the aqua/mariculture world is more than offset by the massive amount of things taken from the wild and put into the glass boxes in our homes, all for our pleasure.

There are two theories behind this.
1) Reefkeeping harms environment because it causes further strain
2) Reefkeeping helps environment because it helps educate people on conservation.

Anyway, we can go in circles about how someone defines benefit. I want to focus more on whether human (ORA) should be intervening with nature without clear benefits to the overall population.

If anything, every captive-bred clown produced (by ORA or anyone else) could potentially take the place of a wild-caught clown, and reduce the strain on the environment.

This point is also irrelevant. Strain on environment has nothing to do whether ORA should be manipulating this type of breeding.

And if ORA earning a profit means they can reinvest that profit in other advancements, such as the captive-bred mandarins, then I only see the profit as a good thing.

I can agree partially with this. But it's also like saying - We will drill in the atlantic so we can lessen our dependence on oil. Sure, sounds great - But at the same time, we're hurting the environment. There has to be a point where you have to say "no", and find other methods. For my example about the oil, you find alternative energy. In ORA's case, you find other ways to make money to drive their business needs.

This is an ethical dilemma, and they have to make a call.

Also, define "greater common good." Are you talking about utilitarianism?

See above. I also gave examples earlier - breeding to feed others, agriculture - all of these have significant impact.

Because in that case ORA is increasing pleasure of hobbyists and decreasing pain of wild-caught clowns. Seems pretty socially responsible in my book.

Absolutely you can decrease the pain of wild-caught clowns. That's why you do captive bred clowns. Why is it necessary to create these new artificial designer clowns through inbreeding, knowing the issues? Thes are not even found in the wild to begin with! Where is the significant benefit to the greater good? (Again, I don't consider personal enjoyment a significant benefit to the greater good)

So back to my question - should ORA be unnaturally creating these clowns without "significant benefit to the greater good", or is it socially irresponsible?
 
Last edited:

SevTT

Advanced Reefer
Location
Suffolk County
Rating - 100%
8   0   0
I think we can all agree that inbreeding has inherent issues. What I see unnatural is when a company decides to take fish and inbreed them, fully knowing the side effects. Personally, I can only argue for them if I see a benefit to the greater good.

Sadly, inbreeding and line breeding have been demonized for no good reason. Both are valid tools used to concentrate desireable phenotypes and genotypes (and to confirm the genotypes of phenotypes) and to eliminate undesireable traits. You talk about 'fully knowing the side effects,' and leave it at that as a scare tactic, without -giving- any good reasons.

The fact is that any breeder attempting to select for specific traits will be required to inbreed their stock. Actually, most real management programs will go through several steps of inbreeding and outbreeding in order to concentrate desireable characteristics and eliminate the undesireable ones. Good health is one of these, along with fecundity, and a good breeder understands this and will select for them.

There are now several strains of animals which have been so extensively managed, genetically, through inbreeding, that they now contain no lethal traits and no undesireable ones. The most common examples are the lab-sterile rat and mouse strains, which can be inbred to your heart's content without a loss of vitality in the brood stock. The genetic variation in the population is nearly zero.

Of course, there are a lot of drawbacks to using inbreeding, but a responsible breeding program manages the drawbacks and uses strict criteria to cull rejects. It's a massively powerful tool, and like any tool, it can be misused. Breeders with no real understanding of genetics or responsibility have resulted in a plague of genetic ailments and defects among certain types of dog breeds, for example. But without the deliberate application of inbreeding, most of those dog breeds wouldn't have existed in the first place.

There's also the fact that many r-type breeders tend to be pretty incestuous -anyway-, and their genetics are thus quite tolerant of this. Damselfish are a good example, as they tend to live in harems of closely-related relatives, and when the female dies, the dominant male will rise to femaledom, and one of the sub-males will be promoted to dominant male. The likelihood that this is a son or brother of the prior male is very high.

Given the difficulty of actually breeding clownfish and the technical expertise behind ORA, I'm pretty sure they know their stuff. It should also be noted that ORA has significant financial incentive to maintain the health of their broodstock and eliminate any negative genetic traits; part of ORA's reputation, and the reason that they can command higher than average prices, is the reputation for health that their critters have.

I can agree partially with this. But it's also like saying - We will drill in the atlantic so we can lessen our dependence on oil. Sure, sounds great - But at the same time, we're hurting the environment. There has to be a point where you have to say "no", and find other methods. For my example about the oil, you find alternative energy. In ORA's case, you find other ways to make money to drive their business needs.

This is an ethical dilemma, and they have to make a call.
So back to my question - should ORA be unnaturally creating these clowns without "significant benefit to the greater good", or is it socially irresponsible?

Not really. The animals, ORA, and hobbyists and the hobby itself benefit from managed breeding programs. It's the process of domestication that we have been applying to animals for thousands and thousands of years. The ultimate goal of an animal is to reproduce, to have its unique characteristics passed on to future generations: by definition, captive breeding programs are there to further this goal. The lightning clownfish and picassos are sports; genetic freaks, mutants, naturally unnatural. The collection of these mutants doesn't impact wild populations and furthers the spread of their unique genetics.

This is the devil's bargain that is domestication: almost guaranteed reproductive success and often significantly less chance of early mortality, coupled with a dependancy on Man to provide for them and/or the possibility that their lives will have a very set span. *shrugs*

As to the morality of it -- this is what we are, this is what we do, as a species. We shape the world to conform to our desires. What we do in these pursuits is no more or less natural than a termite building a mount, or a bee building a hive. And it's no more or less wrong than creating dogs from wolves, cats from ... whatever evil, less domesticated thing cats are descended from, cows from whatever they were, or domesticated ferrets from their ancestors. Or creating roses from the mutants of their ancestors. Or horses. Or sheep. Or goats. Or pigs. The list goes on.

...Or, if you ascribe to one of the religions of the People of the Book, Genesis 1:26 gives us the right. *shrugs*
 

SevTT

Advanced Reefer
Location
Suffolk County
Rating - 100%
8   0   0
If these fish were ever re-introduced I think they would take over the wild clowns habitat. They have been bred to be stronger and able to fight off disease better.

You're falling into a common misconception: that because these animals have been bred to survive better in our aquaria, that they'll be similarly advantaged in the wild. This isn't true. Domesticated animals are supremely well suited to <i>domesticated</i> environments: they've been bred to handle the particular pressures that come from living in captivity. On the other hand, no attention has been paid to their ability to survive in the wild, which requires an -entirely- different set of behaviors and exposes the clownfish to thousands of hazards they'd never encounter in captivity.

The fact is, I'd expect designer clownfish, as with any domesticated animal, to basically stand little chance of survival at all in the wild. At 'worst', they're still the same species as the other clowns, and can mate with them. Their unique (and probably recessive) genetics would be diluted and it's literally -impossible- for them to take over a wild population, without strong selection pressure for their phenotype. You'd just have a wild, normal population that sometimes produced more of these guys. That's not opinion, it's basic genetic theory.

Remember that the lionfish problem is a problem because most of these animals are wild-caught anyway, so they've got a full set of behaviors and instincts and such already lined up if they get released somewhere that can support them. Tank-raised clownfish, who've probably never even seen an anemone or a real predator, are an entirely different kettle of fish.
 

SevTT

Advanced Reefer
Location
Suffolk County
Rating - 100%
8   0   0
They make is sound as if the clownfish is an accessory to your tank. It is a living animal. I will step down for now because this could lead to a very philosophical debate. lol.

Justin

Let me ask: why do you have a reef tank? Are you engaged in serious scientific research? Are you engaged in a captive breeding program to repopulate wild stocks? Are you raising fish and invertebrates to feed yourself? Is it part of an active program to educate the public about reefs, biology, ecology, or conservation?

No, I think that you, like 99.5% of the rest of the people who have reef tanks, have one 'cause, well, it's fascinating and beautiful. The behaviors of the fish, the colors, the glorious bounty of strange life that inhabits and infests even small reef tanks is a wonderful thing to behold.

...So it basically comes down to the point that (effectively) -everyone- who has a reef tank has every animal in that tank either as an accessory for show, an accessory for clean-up, or 'cause it hitchiked in and they didn't actually select it. They're biological baubles collected, sold, bought, bred, and traded for our amusement. A tiny slice of Creation for you to gawk at at and for your leisure, kept alive by technology and educated intervention, like a comatose patient on full life support. Nothing more and nothing less.
 
Last edited:

adamt

Advanced Reefer
Location
westchester ny
Rating - 100%
4   0   0
Hey, Guys. Good discussion here. I have written a bit about the so-called designer clownfish craze in the past (I'm a writer and photographer who frequently covers the marine aquarium industry). I think it's important to point out that all the clowns being discussed in this thread are not the "same type" of designer clowns. Misbarring and other variants often do exist in the wild, but these fishes frequently don't survive because the variant affects predation and/or mating. For example, the PNG (Papua New Guinea) lightning maroon clownfish mentioned earlier (and pictured here) in this thread is a wild-collected maroon clownfish variant; it is NOT the result of selective breeding in captivity. Many of the "designer clownfishes" we see on the market, in fact, originated from wild-collected broodstock.

It's what a breeder does with that broodstock that often encourages the ethical discussions. For example, is it ethical to breed for an anomaly? Is it ethical to manipulate the fish's environment to increase the chances of producing an anomaly (in addition to genetics, we also know environmental factors can significantly impact the frequency of misbarring and other anomalies)? As such, we have a host of ethical issues here that exist along a spectrum from "not such a big deal" to "absolutely abhorrent" depending on your ethics.

Just thought I'd throw that out there. :)

At the end of the day is it ethical to keep fish that were meant to live in the vastness of the world's oceans in a glass box? and Ill do you one better is it ethical to keep pets at all knowing that the pet trade causes the deaths of litterally millions of the animals that pet owners love so much? Personally I believe that if a resource is renewable then there is no harm in using it, and short of that lightning maroon clown I still havent seen a "designer" clown that looks better than the original. My only concern with ora is that lately all of the clowns ive seen from them in my lfs look like crap compared to the wild caught occilarus he gets in every now and then. I really feel like they should focus more on just getting their standard run of the mill false percs to look a little prettier than they currently do, and not so much on creating a clown that looks likea damsel. (especially since many damsel species like dominoes will live in an anenome just like a clown will)

heheh there it is... mho, that and a buck will get ya a cup of coffee.
 

SevTT

Advanced Reefer
Location
Suffolk County
Rating - 100%
8   0   0
Personally I believe that if a resource is renewable then there is no harm in using it, and short of that lightning maroon clown I still havent seen a "designer" clown that looks better than the original. My only concern with ora is that lately all of the clowns ive seen from them in my lfs look like crap compared to the wild caught occilarus he gets in every now and then. I really feel like they should focus more on just getting their standard run of the mill false percs to look a little prettier than they currently do, and not so much on creating a clown that looks likea damsel. (especially since many damsel species like dominoes will live in an anenome just like a clown will)

heheh there it is... mho, that and a buck will get ya a cup of coffee.

Remember -- clownfish are damselfish. :) I personally agree -- except for the lightning clown, I haven't seen any of these mutants that really appeal to me, but, eh, people like 'em, people buy 'em, and since (barring the original broodstock collection) it has no impact on wild populations, I view anything that gets people excited about the hobby as a good thing.

It's the basic nature of any hobby that people will look at it differently. For some people, they've got the whole pokemon aspect going on -- they're collectors, they want one of everything, etc. Some people will theme their tanks on color or something similar. Others go for biotope reefs, with everything looking as natural as possible. Others -- most people -- are a bit of each. I think people who buy $700 designer clownfish have more money than sense, but that's about it. People will pay for the unique and the rare, just for bragging rights. And, frankly, having a higher price on livestock is usually a good thing for the livestock -- the more the animal costs, the better of a chance it'll see a vet when it gets sick.

That being said -- ORA does raise large numbers of 'standard' fish. You just don't hear about 'em as much 'cause they aren't several hundred bucks. ;) It also seems like whatever lighting they keep them under when breeding them isn't very strong and doesn't bring out the kind of coloration that you should have with a clown -- but from everything I've seen they wind up coloring up under bright lights and with good feed. ;)
 
Last edited:

adamt

Advanced Reefer
Location
westchester ny
Rating - 100%
4   0   0
my main concern with ora is that theyve strayed so far from just producing nice false percs that people will once again rely on wild caught individuals becasue of the huge differnce in color, and overall robustness (word?) instead of trying to reinvent the wheel they should just focus on making high quality wheels the old fashioned way. I know they produce alot of standard false percs, but all of the ones ive seen seem to be either misbarred, mishapened, or just washed out. As far as im concerned a bright orange false perc with a good body shape is far more attractive than any of the designer false percs theyve come up with.
 

DHaut

Advanced Reefer
Location
Brooklyn
Rating - 100%
36   0   0
Adam, you might have posted before reading this - ORA could possibly produce brighter clownfish, true. But the ones they do produce color up fine (i've seen this as well). I think that low cost of aquacultured clowns is going to beat out the high cost wild-caught ones in the long run. Sure, there will probably always be wild-caught clowns coming in, but I expect the number to continue to decrease and eventually even out at an equilibrium far below where it would be without clownfish breeders.

It also seems like whatever lighting they keep them under when breeding them isn't very strong and doesn't bring out the kind of coloration that you should have with a clown -- but from everything I've seen they wind up coloring up under bright lights and with good feed. ;)
 

Sponsor Reefs

We're a FREE website, and we exist because of hobbyists like YOU who help us run this community.

Click here to sponsor $10:


Top