Quote:
Originally Posted by shrimpinator123
So, if I have this right, it sounds like we will lose a portion of fish kept, but will still have a number of keep-able species?
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I guess most of the fish that have absolute requirement on live corals, such as corallivores, are not regularly kept in aquariums. These kind of fish like the beautiful corallivore butterflyfishes, orange spotted filefish, some angelfishes and morish idols (latter two are mostly spongivore but do eat corals as well) already adapt very poorly to captivity and/or to captive diet. So just based on hobby perspective, there wont be a large loss, at least in the short term.
In the short term, dead coral reefs will continue to provide shelter to remaining reef fishes. But in the long term, like 200 years from now, those reefs will start to reduce into ruble and sand with the exception of certain reefs I explained above. It will cause large scale habitat loss to all reef fish; for example fish like chromis or anthias do not need live coral, but they do hide inside the Acropora branches. They can continue to hide in dead coral until it erodes away, after that they will disappear from that region as well. .