Tats Ventura

Hey guys I was at tats in Ventura today talking with the owner and he told me he's putting in a Sps tank in about 5 to 6 weeks just wanted to let y'all know

Is this going to replace the large FW display tank?

I was in there today as well. Told me the same thing. Can't wait. No it's going to be in the back beside the frozen food freezer.

Cant wait! thanks for the heads up

Tat got his frag tank up, running and stocked with over 100 frags. Plus!!!! Many are named frags for sick deals! I saw 2 rastas for like $30 bucks. Even blue and red hornets! Strawberry shortcake frag too!

I was there yesterday and there were like MABE and I use this lightly 40 frags and it looks pretty sad they have mad briopsis and most of it was zoos that were actually pretty nice but the sps selection was small

I went there tonight and they're we're some nice pieces. Joe the Coral, Purple Plasma, and some nice Tri Color Valida's too. I think there were a few Red Planets. They all seemed fairly priced for nice size frags, most of which were encrusted. They're were a bunch or red/blue hornets, Rasta's, and a few other really nice things that I can't remember for much cheaper than I have seen elsewhere. It's nice to see a local store carrying nice sps frags.

Cory- I guess I need to go back a look again. The first I was there, I counted 125 frags. Yeah not as good as vivid but Tat has got it going on in my opinion. Can't beat their prices.

I agree that there prices are great! but maybe people came and picked over all of their good stuff before I went in.

I was over there yesterday. They had quite a few frags. Talked to the guy working there and he said it's usually pretty full of frags. Guess you went on the wrong day.

I was back at Tat's again last night and talked with Yiu Hung about the frag tank. He's had it set up for about 3 weeks or so now. He told me he has a deal with a big local grower who is supplying him with the frags from his mother colonies. So they are all local and home grown. He plans on keeping the tank stocked as best he can and bringing in new stuff as he can.

I told him we had been talking about it on here and that everyone was glad to see it. He was glad to hear that. If there is something you want that he dosen't have, just ask him and he'll see if he can get it.

I was also talking to him about some fish. seems he gets a lot of his fish now directly from Balli. I knew they were doing a direct import but wasn't sure from where.

So in other words dont buy fish from him this hobbie needs to stop hurting the oceans we all love

He carries tank raised fish as well.

All stores import their fish. There are less than half of the fish we keep that are tank raised.

So when you set up your new 90, will it be stocked with only tank raised fish and corals? Will you be able to prove it?

Not picking on you, just stating facts.

Yeah, when it comes to rearing saltwater fish, this hobby is still in its infancy. Breeding saltwater fish isn’t as easy as it is in freshwater, it’s a lot more complicated. Aside from a hand full of fish species, the majority (if not all) of the fish that you see at any lfs is going to be wild caught.

yep, whole different ballgame.

FW has live bearers and egg layers. Either way, once they are born, they look like fish and will eat perpared food once the yoke sac is gone.

But for SW, they look nothing like fish when they are born. Most are what you call plankton and eat things that are even smaller. Stuff that can be grown but it's a long process.

That is why I was soo happy when I saw my Naso tangs doing the matting dance. Not that I could have raised the off spring, but just the fact that they were matting in a tank as it hadn't been done before. So imagine how sad I was when I lost them.

4 out of 6 of my fish are CB

Nice!

Have them mate is one step, and then you have to experiment with different types of micro fauna, at various steps of their developmental process, changing it as they progress through the different stages. If you're lucky to have 2 fish mate, and take to eating the first prepared food, then you have to experiment with the next stage, if they don't like it or don't eat it they die. It takes a long time to get the process right.

I haven't been paying attention to the breeding game for about 6 months but last I knew, the first person to captive breed sailfin tangs are going to be renown the world over.

Yep, it sounds farily simple and straight forward on paper. But when you get down to all the little details, it's a full time 24 hour job almost.

Frequent water changes, like daily. but you have to make sure you don't take your newly hatched fish. Fresh grown ffod that has to increase in size as the fish grow, again, an almot weekly change. And that's just to get you started.

I saw a setup a AoP where they were rasing rotifiers. They had like 20 10g tanks going, all in different stages, just to feed the new fish and try and raise them.

So now you have a glimse into what it takes to breed SW fish and why tank raised cost more then wild caught.

I was told that my $300 dollar pair of Naso's would be woth about 5G's if I got them to breed.

Crap thats alot! The club as a whole should set up some sort of breeding type thing so we could breed our own fish and then sell some for really cheap help stop the fish from being taken from the ocean

As long as the fish and corals are collected in a sustainable and responsible way, then there is no problem with catching them from the wild in my opinion. As already stated in this thread, the majority of corals and fish in this hobby are from the wild. If you go to Reef Raft, the majority of their spectabular pieces are wild caught, and most of it is first or limited edition. As long as this is a hobby people will continue to catch coral and fish in the wild because it makes money. Human consume, and we do so without much thought. Having this hobby go to non-wild caught would be like trying to convert the world food markets to organic only; it's just not feasible on a grand scale because production doesn't move fast enough.

There are people/places that are trying to do their best at conservation. Pacific Aqua farms, i.e. Walt Smith, has a huge ocean growing facility out on the islands. And he is one of the major importers, has been for years. That's where a lot of LFS get their corals, from Walt. So yes there are steps being put into place to try and deminish the removal of "wild" corals.

There are also places that are doing ocean growing services just to replace the corals out on the reefs. Saw a show on it the other day.

There are other places/people who are trying their hand at tank raised fish. ORA is probably one of the biggest. There was a guy over in the valley who was breeding clowns. I met him years ago. He had a few post of his adventures on RC back in the day. He's one of the guys who first started breeding some of the different morphs of clowns that you now see as more common. I'm not sure if he's still breeding.

Then you also have people like Paul. Small Mom and Pop outfits growing corals out of their house and selling. Lot's of those around. In between Walt and Paul, you have some decent size growers who are selling to some of the LFS in their area, Tat's being one of those LFS.

As for Tat's, I'll continue to buy from them. Yiu Hung and his Dad have been in the bussiness a long time. They are trying to do the right thing. Yiu carries tank raised fish when he can get them. He's been doing frags for a long time. Now he has a local grower to buy from. He even asked me when I was going to bring him in some more RBTA's as he prefers them to getting them from the ocean. So I think he's doing what he can with the constraints the hobbie has.

You have to look at our hobbies history. Fresh Water fish keeping as been going on for 1000's of years. The Salt Water keeping of fish didn't really start to take off until the 70's. I know cuse I was one of them. So by comparission, FW has a big head start on us. But things are being done every day to try and close the gap.

As for the fish breeding and raising, a lot of us have had fish breed in their tanks, I know I have. That's been the easy part. The hard part is collecting the fry and raising them.

Well said ray

So does that mean you still buy fish from Tat's.

No im going to try to still buy tank raised fish and coral. I figure any little thing i can do to help the oceans is better than doing nothing