endangered-aquarium-fish

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banggai cardinalfish!!! they live in small shoals in shallow water around the banggai islands in indonesia. its extremely rare for marine fish to have such a restricted range bc the ocean is all connected and they usually spend the first month of their life as plankton drifting wherever the current takes them. banggai cardinalfish are different tho bc instead of just releasing thousands of eggs and letting them drift away they do smth extremely cool called mouthbrooding!!!!

the males scoop up the eggs in their mouth and keep the babies there for weeks until they grow big enough to leave!!! by the time theyre free instead of being plankton theyre just like tiny versions of their parents. that way they have plenty of protection and food while they grow- idk abt cardinalfish specifically but some other mouthbrooding fish feed the babies with a nutritious slime they secrete from the inside of their mouth!!

when the babies are released they all swim together to the nearest longspine sea urchin. these are pretty big herbivorous animals and they have these giant wicked looking venomous spines that you dont wanna touch but the baby fish fit perfectly between them :3 they just hang out there for a while until theyre fully grown and eventually they move into seagrass beds, mangrove swamps, and branching corals. nobody really knows why but areas with reduced cardinalfish populations also have fewer of these urchins so theres some kind of symbiosis going on. their whole lives cardinalfish mainly eat zooplankton they just catch it as it drifts by so theyre rlly slow moving and tend to just hang out in one spot since they cant rlly afford to hunt down their prey - thatd take more energy than they can get from eating it. they just constantly munch on these tiny critters all day long. theyre not as chill or calm as they look though, theyre very popular prey for all kinds of predators so they have to stay in whatever shelter they can find and be constantly alert and they can dart away at a moment's notice if they feel the need. they usually stay in groups for added safety and are very peaceful to other fish but they tend to form breeding pairs within those groups and get extremely territorial about their mates. their small range means they're vulnerable to extinction and they're endangered from habitat degradation and overfishing for aquariums but these days the ones we can buy are usually captive bred which is a wonderful thing- the aquarium hobby in this case went from pushing them towards extinction to helping preserve them in case something happens in their native range.

I know nothing about fish.

I like fish for their aesthetics. I like fish because swimmy. I like fish because cute.

I like fish because HELL YEAH BROTHERRRR THAT'S A FUCKIN FISH.

I do not have a lot of fish trivia. I want to learn more fish trivia.

I know a lot about this one species of eel, so :D

If anyone wants to give me random fish trivia and infodump in my notes, I'm open for it :3

And if anyone can tell me about fish local to Oceania/the southwest Pacific/New Zealand then PLEASE.

I should make a list of my favourite fish.

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where did u go pookie

bark bark bark

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average aquarium driftwood

NO WAY

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Best Parosphromenus spp. (”Licorice Gouramis”)

All species of Parosphromenus, to my knowledge, come from habitats that are under threat. Most species are designated Endangered or Critically Endangered by the IUCN Red List. Any fish from this genus should be maintained in a species tank and breeding should be attempted if we are going to continue to maintain them in the hobby, and perhaps through hobby preservation, prevent the loss of these species from the world. Check out the Parosphromenus Project for more information on preservation efforts. (Though I should note that I have reservations about the efficacy of projects aimed to “preserve species through the hobby.” See a post here where I discuss this some.)

These are gorgeous little fishes I’ve loved since I first got into the fish keeping hobby, but I’ve yet to have the opportunity to keep any. They are rare in the trade, for good reason, and I have yet to be in a situation where I had a tank ready and felt comfortable with acquiring some. As I look forward to setting up a fish room, the time has come that I will absolutely be seriously shopping for some ethically sourced Parosphromenus (likely hobby-bred). No matter how high my interest is in a species, I will not keep it if I cannot source it without acquiring a wild-caught specimen of an imperiled species being sold indiscriminately to the hobby at large.

Below is a ranked list of Parosphromenus to help me prioritize species to keep, should I have the opportunity to pick and choose between species. Rankings are based purely on subjective opinion, prioritizing those whose aesthetics I prefer. These are all great fishes!

Keep reading

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im glad you’re back

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pst, hey, down here, lemme tell you a secret

I post the fish of the day on youtube too, not only that? But there's more content to come, a video on understand the ecosystem in the mariana's trench is in the works at the moment, and I make fish video that release on the weekends too!

check it out!

today's fish

The channel

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unshoutout to those aquarium siphons with the little pump things to keep you from ingesting the tank water. like what if i wanna ingest the tank water 😿

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Paracheirodon innesi - Neon Tetra - Tetra Neón

Location: South America

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guys

theoretically how to make a self sustaining fish ecosystem (that i would trust more than trying to grow all the fish food in the tank with the fish. even tho that can work)

have an established planted tank and two separate clear containers, both at least a gallon

set the containers by a bright window and fill both with water from the tank (not newly dechlorinated, it has to be established)

in one container, add some gravel or lava rock to house beneficial bacteria to stabilize the water parameters, a bunch of dried plant trimmings from the main tank, azolla to absorb heavy metals, and a bunch of scuds, "pest" snails, ostracods, amano shrimp, etc. just anything thats rlly hardy and eats algae and rotting debris

in the other container, add gravel/lava rock, some kinda live plant to keep the water clean, some snails or smth to eat algae, and some daphnia

optionally add a bubbler to both, it might help

the one with the azolla and dead plants is gonna grow a bunch of greenwater (phytoplankton) since theres a lot of sunlight and nutrients and nothing else to consume them- all those creatures will release the nutrients from the dead plants into the water and also eat any other algae that tries to grow, and azolla is a nitrogen fixer so it won't consume much from the water it just keeps it from being toxic to daphnia (azolla is especially good at doing that)

every day, use a turkey baster to add a bit of greenwater to the daphnia, some daphnia to the main tank, and some water from the tank to the greenwater. so the daphnia feed the fish, the waste from the fish feeds the plants, the plants feed the critters in the greenwater, the critters feed the greenwater, the greenwater feeds the daphnia, and then the daphnia feed the fish again. and the plants in the main tank keep it clean so you have a source of good aged water for like constant water changes on the daphnia and greenwater to keep them going indefinitely

depending on what critters you put in with the greenwater you can use them as fish food too

if you dont wanna spread the azolla outside of the greenwater tank you can use one of those little floating hoops to make a clear spot where you can put the turkey baster

you can also use the dead plants to grow infusoria which is simpler and the same vibe but only feeds newly hatched fry

have not tried this but it should work im like halfway there i just need to find daphnia. lmk if you have any thoughts

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ty bestie good opinions love the sturgeon

Gimme ur opinions

theres an ongoing debate about captive bred vs wild caught fish in the hobby and both sides have valid points but personally i always try to get captive bred. but i wanna know what yall think bc i was reading abt cardinal tetras earlier and it made me question that a bit

basically captive bred fish are better adapted in almost every way to aquarium life, generally less likely to carry diseases/parasites, more resistant to sudden changes in water quality like ammonia spikes or pH crashes, tend to be more colorful, aren't a drain on wild populations, and the entire process of how they get to your tank is much more ethical and better for the fish. but they can sometimes be very inbred and all carry the same few v dangerous parasites and diseases if you get them from big factory farms (like guppies and neon tetras which have suddenly gone from super duper hardy to rlly sensitive in the last few years) so you have to be careful where they come from but as long as you are theyre generally better

Wild caught fish are more likely to carry parasites and diseases than most captive bred ones, they're a lot less adaptable to fluctuating water parameters, they may not know how to eat prepared foods, they can sometimes be a drain on wild populations (some species have become critically endangered from overcollection while others seem unaffected by it even when it happens on a massive scale so it depends on the species), and the most important part to me is that the whole process of getting them out of their natural habitat and shipping them across the planet is extremely dangerous and cruel to the fish.

But its more complicated than that- some fish like otocinclus come from pools that dry up seasonally and leave millions of fish to die. So even if the shipping process is horribly stressful and most of them don't survive, they would've suffocated in the forest anyway and those few that do live get much happier longer lives than they would've had. Also, some fish (especially cardinal tetras) are HUGE for local economies. Which normally I'd be like shush that is no excuse at all BUT we live under capitalism and its one of the only sustainable ways for those communities to find a livelihood. So it provides an incentive for them to protect the ecosystem bc without a stable population of these fish they would have no other source of income except for things like logging and poaching endangered species which are far more destructive to the ecosystem than catching the most common tiny fish. so those are the two situations where wild caught starts to seem like potentially a valid and good way to get fish

There's also the issue of the experiences of the fish- like i would imagine a fish that grew up in wide open rivers where it could swim for miles is a lot less happy in captivity than one that's descended from several generations that lived their whole lives in aquariums. ofc thats less true for some than others, like for example apistogramma pairs tend to set up territories in the wild thatre about the size of a medium aquarium and they never leave so im sure they prefer the tank where they get taken care of over living in the same amount of space in the wild but with predators and limited food. but for fish that move around a lot i have a feeling it matters to them

so yeah whatre yalls thoughts about this which one do you generally prefer and are there more nuances that im missing

[endangered-aquarium-fish]

Gimme ur opinions

theres an ongoing debate about captive bred vs wild caught fish in the hobby and both sides have valid points but personally i always try to get captive bred. but i wanna know what yall think bc i was reading abt cardinal tetras earlier and it made me question that a bit

basically captive bred fish are better adapted in almost every way to aquarium life, generally less likely to carry diseases/parasites, more resistant to sudden changes in water quality like ammonia spikes or pH crashes, tend to be more colorful, aren't a drain on wild populations, and the entire process of how they get to your tank is much more ethical and better for the fish. but they can sometimes be very inbred and all carry the same few v dangerous parasites and diseases if you get them from big factory farms (like guppies and neon tetras which have suddenly gone from super duper hardy to rlly sensitive in the last few years) so you have to be careful where they come from but as long as you are theyre generally better

Wild caught fish are more likely to carry parasites and diseases than most captive bred ones, they're a lot less adaptable to fluctuating water parameters, they may not know how to eat prepared foods, they can sometimes be a drain on wild populations (some species have become critically endangered from overcollection while others seem unaffected by it even when it happens on a massive scale so it depends on the species), and the most important part to me is that the whole process of getting them out of their natural habitat and shipping them across the planet is extremely dangerous and cruel to the fish.

But its more complicated than that- some fish like otocinclus come from pools that dry up seasonally and leave millions of fish to die. So even if the shipping process is horribly stressful and most of them don't survive, they would've suffocated in the forest anyway and those few that do live get much happier longer lives than they would've had. Also, some fish (especially cardinal tetras) are HUGE for local economies. Which normally I'd be like shush that is no excuse at all BUT we live under capitalism and its one of the only sustainable ways for those communities to find a livelihood. So it provides an incentive for them to protect the ecosystem bc without a stable population of these fish they would have no other source of income except for things like logging and poaching endangered species which are far more destructive to the ecosystem than catching the most common tiny fish. so those are the two situations where wild caught starts to seem like potentially a valid and good way to get fish

There's also the issue of the experiences of the fish- like i would imagine a fish that grew up in wide open rivers where it could swim for miles is a lot less happy in captivity than one that's descended from several generations that lived their whole lives in aquariums. ofc thats less true for some than others, like for example apistogramma pairs tend to set up territories in the wild thatre about the size of a medium aquarium and they never leave so im sure they prefer the tank where they get taken care of over living in the same amount of space in the wild but with predators and limited food. but for fish that move around a lot i have a feeling it matters to them

so yeah whatre yalls thoughts about this which one do you generally prefer and are there more nuances that im missing

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updated the list

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btw i cannot post anything with any schedule bc busy + depression

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ME

Fish owners be like

This is Henry, he’s a Neon Yellow Murder Cichlid. He ate 3 tank mates, chased a pregnant Molly around the tank for an hour, and bit my hand when I tried to replant the plant he uprooted, so now he’s in his own tank. He’s horrible and awful and threatened my family and I love him and would die for him

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YAYYY I LOVE HIM SM TY :D

can u sphere my betta :3

Get sphered

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One thing that pisses me off is people seeing fish in aquariums (the establishments, not home aquariums) and being like “It’s so sad because the ocean is so big and the tank is so small and they’ll never know freedom blah blah blah-“ I’m not talking about sharks and marine mammals here but the majority of fish are not at all bothered by being in an aquarium instead of the open ocean. Like, I personally would love to be a little clown fish in one of those big reef tanks. Fed regularly. Whole team of people monitoring my health and well-being. No predators. Medicated if I show signs of illness. Aquarium fish have cushy gigs in comparison to their wild companions.