Ornamental Fish Production and Management (1+1)

14.1.1 Introduction

The FAO statistics indicated that the world export of ornamental fish steadily rose from US $ 160.7 million since 1999 to a peak of US $ 282.6 million in 2006. Most of the world’s supplies of ornamental fishes are from Asian countries. Singapore is the largest exporter of ornamental fish contributing 21.70 per cent followed by Spain, Czech Rep and Malaysia during 2006 (Dey, 2008). USA is the world’s largest single market for ornamental fishes and imported US $ 48.40 million worth of fish in 2006, followed by UK (US $ 30.80 million) and Japan (US $ 27.20 million).

The ornamental fish market can be divided into four main sectors. The largest sector is the tropical freshwater species sector, which occupies about 80 – 90% of the market. The other sectors are tropical marine and brackish water species, including invertebrates; coldwater (freshwater) species, mainly goldfish and koi and cold water marine and brackish water species.

In all there are about 1600 species of ornamental fish in the market, out of which 750 are freshwater species. More and more species are being added to the list as a result of advances in breeding, transport and aquarium technology. Some 90% of the species are cultured while the remaining 10% are collected from the wild. The annual world turnover for ornamental fish aquaculture is estimated at about US$ 200 million. The marine fish species constitute about 20% of the market. About 95% of marine fish are collected from the wild while 5% are bred fish.

The price of an ornamental fish is considerably higher than the price of a fish destined for human consumption. On average, there is a ratio of 1:100 between prices of food fish and aquarium fish. In general, marine ornamental fish have higher unit value compared to freshwater ornamental fish. The freshwater species dominating the market are mainly from the families Poecilidae, Characidae, Cyprinidae, and Cichlidae. The main species are guppy, platy, swordtail, molly, goldfish neon tetra, angelfish, , zebra danio and discus. The guppy and the neon tetra represent more than 25% of the world market in volume and more than 14% in value.