The world’s first public aquarium specialising in clownfish has now opened its door for visitors. The aquarium, which is located in Taitung County in Taiwan, will eventually house 1500 clown fish from 18 different species.

The aim of the clownfish aquarium is to educate the public about clownfish life-cycles and captive breeding techniques, and specimens will be sent to the aquarium by breeders such as the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center in Taitung.

“By meeting market needs we are helping to ease the crisis of clownfish species being endangered”, says researcher and museum planner Ho Yuan-hsing. “Due to the increasing number of artificially-bred clown fish, the fishing of clownfish is no longer seen in Taiwan’s coastal areas because it is unnecessary.”

AC comment:

The movie “Finding Nemo” made a lot of people interested in getting their own “Nemo”, but few were willing to learn how to properly maintain a saltwater aquarium. Before you decide to get a clownfish, please keep in mind that these are marine fishes. Simply adding some salt to your freshwater aquarium will not make is a suitable home for marine fish; not even for the sturdy clownfish. Even though the worst Nemo-craze seems to have cooled off now, a lot of “Nemos” still face an early death in the hands of uninformed fish keepers; deaths that could have been easily prevented.