I'm a full time tropical fish collector here in Honolulu, Hawaii and I was wondering if anyone else here also collects fish? I do a lot of deep collections using scuba and get crosshatch triggers, bandit angels, flame wrasse, Tinkers butterflyfish, gold dwarf morays, and then all of the typical common Hawaiian variety stuff. In fact, just last Wednesday I was diving 120ft. Deep for crosshatch and had a 17ft. tiger shark swim by! Yikes!

O man that sounds like pure craziness down there with that tiger how big was it? But now I know who to contact if I want salt water stuff from there. I collect here in Florida for myself and mostly fresh water stuff I’ve done some collecting for marine fish and inverts around here damsels, angels, spotted rays tangs, coral beauties, anemones but there’s a lot more stuff down here puffers, Parrots fish and wrasses just to name a few. but guys like mediahound and some of the salt water guys would be more knowledgeable of the diving in deep water I just have the regular open water license.

you know what... Most of the tropical divers down here only have their OW license or no license at all!!! I know a guy in Florida named Rob Feldman that collects and does aquarium maintenance. He gets a lot of queen angels and stuff like that.

sound good i just do it for fun. what can you see as far as freshwater fish and plants in hawaii native and or introduce in lakes, river, canal

I don't know. Freshwater fish are too cheap for me to deal with and most if not all are aquacultured here in the trade. I guess from what I can remember from the last time I messed around in a stream there were swordtails, guppies, plecos, and some really uninteresting native species. I really don't know... I don't do the freshwater thing.

you know what? what you find uninteresting to freshwater guys like myself, those fish are like gold. do you know what kinds of native fish?

no. I don't.

you said that the fish are like gold? What Hawaiian freshwater fish have you EVER heard of that is worth $$$? My point exactly.

Welcome aboard Rob! Looking forward to some pics of your bounties!
Sounds like a job in paradise.

F/W may not be that interesting to a S/W diver, unfortunate that you are missing out though. But, no, the $ gain in the F/W is not as good as in S/W so I can see what you are saying.
In reality though, and though I do not keep any F/W at the moment, F/W have their own little niche in the aquarium hobby. Watching eartheaters breed and care for their young, tank raised discus of all different color morphs interact with each other and their owner, a shoal or rosie barbs streaming by lush green vegitation and even a tank full of African mouthbrooders with colors of such diversity and personalities to match...
Yes, S/W fish are costly and you can make a goodly amount collecting and selling them, but F/W have their place and are just as facinating, in some ways more so, especially if you are wanting to observe the breeding behaviors of tropical fish.
Please don't belittle the F/W aquarium species for they in themselves can bring enjoyment and awe to the keeper, and that so without having to fork out $600 for a fish that will never spawn in captivity and if it does happen to, rearing the larvae would be next to impossible.
But, for some the $ sign is all that matters.
And before anyone gets all bent out of shape becasue I spoke the truth, if the F/W species demanded a higher price than the S/W, where would you be? Diving off the reefs or standing in the streams with net in hand?

if there was more $ in freshwater fish I would be breeding them-- of course! But the thing is... I live in Hawaii.. Not the Amazon, not Africa, not Vietnam, or some other exotic place that has really nice freshwater fish. The freshwater fish HERE are not exciting. No discus or arrowana or anything else cool. We have guppies and swordtails. I'm not saying that freshwater fish suck in general, they just suck when they come from HAWAII.

They couldn't be as bad as the local species found where I am.

where r u from?

Lower Alabama, Florida panhandle. There are some nice things in the gulf, sea horse, batfisha nd such, not much in the F/W unless you are wanting to eat them. There are some killies, though I don't know anything about them and some cool looking goby types.

my sister used to live in Pensacola... She said the same thing. I have a friend down here that just came back from the Gulf a year ago (working for NOAA) and he brought back a handful of pancake batfish. Really cool!

Here is a picture of those pancake batfish that I was talkting about.... I am also throwing in a picture of the Hawaiian Dragon moray that I caught last week Wednesday night--he was about 17".

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	batfish.jpg (147.0 KB, 50 views)
	eel.jpg (108.1 KB, 51 views)

Nice! Upload them to your gallery so we can find them later!

Flricordia, don't you have Pygmy Sunfish? And lots of beautiful Darters?

cool

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do you sell any of them

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