rare cichlids in captivity

[stormhawk]

speaking about keeping rare cichlids, how many of us in here actually keep them to breed them in captivity for others to have them? while it is easy to say some people keep them to collect them just because they're rare, but isn't it the same fate for them in the wild? a rare cichlid may be rare, but can the aquarist keep them and propagate them successfully? sometimes these fish die in the home aquarium even though the aquarist has tried hard to keep it alive in the confines of a glass tank. but isn't it the same fate as their cousins under threat from foreign species in the wild? someone can easily say, "hey, look we're keeping and caring for them" , but how far can that one person go? does he intend to increase their numbers so that the pressure is taken off the wild populations?

conservation doesn't need to be written in a set of rules such as CITES, it needs to start with us aquarists first. look at the arowana for example. it was threatened in the wild due to overfishing for the aquarium trade and it itself is very much a food fish for some of the people native to its range. yet some farms have gone one up and managed to breed the arowana commercially. how much can be said for the cichlids? talking about Lake Victoria cichlids, aquarists in the States and Europe have had success in bringing back some of the astatotilapia and haplochromine species back from the brink of extinction at the hands of the Nile perch and human exploitation of the cichlids for food. even livebearers like Skiffia francesae are extinct in the wild but alive and doing well in captivity to the efforts of people who are working to conserve them for eventual release into the wild. and mind you, it's a very drab looking species.

sometimes these fishes are collected for the aquarium trade, like the clown loach in Indonesia, the harlequin rasbora from Singapore and lots of other species from different parts of the world. but has anyone made the effort to maintain captive populations rather than just keeping them for the sake of keeping them? i'd say some have, but the proportion of people who make the effort is very very small in comparison to the number of people out there who just keep them for the sake of keeping them.

rather than just sitting there and saying i'm keeping captive-bred specimens, why don't we do something about it? why don't we start breeding them, raising the fry to distribute to others? we can always place the blame on how ineffective CITES is sometimes or how some people happen to be overly "conservationist". being conservationist isn't a crime, it just becomes over-zealous when the conservationist doesn't do his/her bit to keep the wild populations free of human pressures. by maintaining captive populations we are all doing the fishes a favour.

the animals don't need to be colourful or attractive to us such as the panda for us to put in an effort to conserve them. it's all in us to keep them alive and propagate them for others to enjoy them too.

regards, []

P.S. : no offence intended, especially to those who keep rare fishes. []

[lsz]

I think it is great you had made strong opinion.
If we want to be pleased all the time, will never learn.

Heres what i think

I think you are talking abt just one side of the story, or rather, one kind of ppl. bit of a sweeping statement.

For example,
I may be keeping a rare species, and i argue that it is not the cause of demise of a certain species in the wild.

But at the same time i do not champion the grand conservationist cause. Because it is out of my reach.I am not up to it, so i dont mention that my cause for keeping something is for conservation. Rather, i disagree with the fact that if a fish is endangered, i should not keep it. Esp when fishkeeping hobby is not the cause of its demise in the wild. It stops at there.

From where i stand, i feel it is in fact the ppl who advocate against keeping a species for the fact they are endangered making empty talks.

I know i cannot do anything, thus i dont dare talk abt conservation thru my own breeding efforts.

Yes most of us are at the mercy of "popular interest"
Thus giant pandas and such recieve high profile help efforts.
You may say that it is not how appealing the animal is that render its worth to be rescued. I think a lot of ppl including myself understand this very well. But whats the next step from myself or yourself?


Personally i dont have a real endangered species (except arowana but thats another story) with me. The only reason is that i am not really drawn to them, not due to any conservation issue

[CoryDorus]

This is my thought ...

If a particular fish is endangered, the more we have to keep the fishes in Aquarist hand becoz the chance of them breeding/survival are higher as we learn more about them.

The fishes natural habitat is losing anyway in most part of the world or probably to the aquarium trade, to the messes. And normally they are not Zoo breeding/collector items. With so many species even NAtinal aquarium iwll be overwhelm if they do have breeding programs.

So the catch is here, if better equip aquarist stop having them, most of them will end up in pp who dun know much about them anyway. And it will be the demise of the species becoz the wild can't sustain their numbers either.

If out of 100 Aquarist and a few succeeded I think is already very good enough compared to wild which are in decline and we are doing nothing.

Who's know someone may announced the fish extinct in the wild but abundant in the City thanks to Aquarists.

Some of the important species will also get fish farms interested where their breeding success can even be much higher just like Arowana.

[A. Moae]

Guys, great statements! My sentiments exactly. I think thru' the years, local aquarists have matured in this aspect. However, there's still alot more to be done 'Educating' those who isn't in the 'league' yet, and that's gonna be quite a task, I guarantee you that. No offence, but I personally think this uphill task is much affiliated to the 'culture' in Singapore. Of course, I'm not saying every Singaporean is like this.

Example - The Germans & the Japanese do an awful lot of homework in their fishkeeping hobby. I personally know some of these people who helps to conserve by putting in plenty of effort, collecting such wild specimens & breeding them at exhorbitant costs to themselves, any layman would question the logic behind it.

Would anyone here do this sort of thing?[]

[lsz]

Moae, personally i feel fishkeeping in our region had not started off as "knowledge based". We are behind in this aspect. years ago i could not find much good information on fish at all, and at that time i could not afford to mail order books from overseas.
But internet changed things almost overnight. Ppl are learning things in a few days what many had taken much longer to learn. Plus ppl are generally more affuent too..We will not be behind for too long.


also abt motivation behind fishkeeping, i think it is a lot abt the culture we are in, and expectations ppl have of this hobby.
personally i do not have such great dedication myself to dare talk abt any conservation efforts at all.

[Dovii]

Agree with you LSZ.
We cannot apply a blanket to all endangered species by saying stopping the keeping of them as aquarium subjects would save them.

It is a different situation for arrowanas, and madasgacar cichlids for eg.
Arros suffered from over collection, but maddies suffered from habitat destruction, and are eaten out of existance by the snakehead and stop from mating by the tilapias. Conservation, in their case, is useless. Conserved what? The rivers, swamps and forest? But the pple in madasgacar need to develope them for their whatever reasons, the cost of urbanisation, modernisation. So for the pple who want to preserved the cichlids, which bank support you so that the pple can be fed, has a job, and can drag trawl nets such that they can pick the snakehead and kill them, and return the others back?. Obviously that's an uphill task beyond us.

In fact, the American cichlid association has articles that said collection of cichlids might do them good, in that if the local pple realised that there is money in it, they will fiercely protect their lakes and rivers. Once that is realised, them we can move on to education on careful collection.

That is how the tanganyikan and malawi cichlids are keep so intact by the local people.