Originally posted by ophiura
Most hobbyists will avoid any place that willingly admits they sell cyanide caught fish.
***** has a relationship with an aquaculture firm for some of their items, as does SWF. Bully for both of them.
No one can claim that all their fish are net caught. Here one example:
In an effort to increase the rewards for net use, two years ago we opened the GoodFish importing and wholesale facility in San Jose, CA, to market only cyanide-free fish and thereby to improve the prices poor coastal fish collectors would get for using nets instead of cyanide. After operating the GoodFish facility for nearly two years, at a cost of close to $100,000, the GoosFish Program was forced to shut down its operations due to persistent losses resulting from competitive market disadvantages. The cost of cyanide-free fish from reliable sources was substantially higher than the cost of cyanide-contaminated fish sold by other wholesale operations, and we could not enlist sufficient retail dealers willing to pay higher prices for healthier and ecologically preferable fish. The aquarium industry is extremely price-sensitive and, despite a lot of anti-cyanide rhetoric, very few dealers were willing to pay higher prices for cyanide-free fish. This was the heart of the GoodFish Program's problems, dealers would not pay for healthier but more expensive fish taken using less environmentally destructive methods. Our marketing problems were exaccerbated by the 9/11 terrorist attack and its aftermath. After 9/11, local California retail dealers reduced their purchase from GiidFish because of concerns about the looming recession, and we were prevented from shipping fish around the U.S. because of new security-oriented air cargo restrictions imposed by the FAA. After two years of financial losses, it became clear (in retrospect) that the GoodFish program could not successfully sell cyanide-free fish until AFTER the marketability and profitability of cyanide-contaminated fish are reduced in the U.S. and other consumer nations.
(spelling mistakes left uncorrected)