Section 3...continued..
Buying from Online Store/Retailer
You really do have to be careful when purchasing clownfishes online. Like purchasing any other fish or coral 'sight unseen', you will not have the ability to pick exactly 'what you want'. Sometimes they will send you a misbar (incomplete stripes), most of the times full bars. Depending on what you want, you may not get what you 'envision'.
Furthermore, as consumers, we do not get to find out whether the fish is eating, how long its been at the retailers tanks, or what condition it is in. We also do not know whether this fish is housed with other fishes or similar fishes that harbor diseases/parasites. This is one reason online retailers offer a 'live arrive guarantee' of some sort.
I am an advocate for purchasing clownfishes online because with some harder to get species, you will have no luck finding them locally. At times you will get something else from what you initially 'ordered' (i.e. you may get an Amphiprion sebae, when you actually ordered an Amphiprion polymnus. So the element of surprise is there.
The challenge in buying clownfishes online is having them settle down in the tank, quarantining them, and have them survive. Like other fishes, clownfishes are prone to diseases, especially after a long day of spending time in a small bag of water with little air.
However, there is another benefit to purchasing online, which is that at times, different geographical strains are available of each species. When you go to your local fish store, fishes are normally labeled by their common names (which i highly despise), rather than their scientific names (although some do label using this method). What is missing is the origin of the fishes you wish to purchase. The true percula clownfish (Amphiprion percula has several different geographical strains. While at times you can tell visually tell where a true percula clown originates from (i.e. an Onyx percula originates from the Papua New Guinea, PNG from now on), most of the time it is difficult to differentiate. When buying clownfishes, I always want to know where my fishes originate from, so that I know what to label them as or call them as, when offsprings are born. So for the true percula above, the other strain comes from the Solomon Islands, otherwise known as the "SI" true percula, as compared to the "PNG" true percula.
If all local fish stores use scientific names, this will take out all the confusion about basic questions like, "do I have an ocellaris or true percula?" Then there is always a benefit for the clownfish lovers out there, and that is, at times your local fish store will label fish incorrectly, and if you know your species and what they physically look like, this is your gain.
In general, there will be several geographical strains of each species, some more than others. I will just name these geographical locations with broad terms: Coral Sea (approx. 15.00 S latitude, 150 E longitude; more than 1 million square miles), Indo-Pacific (Indonesia, Phillipines, etc), Fiji/Papau, Solomon Islands, Marshall Islands, Papua New Guinea, Cebu Sea(which borders Phillipines, home to localized black Amphiprion polymnus, Great Barrier Reef, Japan/Okinawa (northern Pacific Ocean), and of course the southernmost reefs Lord Howe Islands, and others off the Australian coast.
So when buying online, remember to take into account the live-arrive guarantee, know what geographic variations you will get, and expect the worst (which most of the times will be better, and will ease your mind). Quarantining and acclimation of clownfishes will come at a later section.
Best,
Ilham
(post 6)
