Re: tubarosa revisited again!--cichlids

Andrew Boyd (andrew at pcug.org.au)
Sat, 20 Apr 1996 17:24:36 +1000

At 09:01 PM 4/17/96 -0700, Peter Unmack wrote:
>On Sun, 14 Apr 1996, Andrew Boyd wrote:
>> (chomp)
>> fishes, be they attractive Cichlids or useful Desert Gobies ;).
>
>Actually, Rob Wager (whom the Aussies will know) had a good use for
>desert gobies. He thought they made excellent anchovy substitutes on
>pizzas. He bred hundreds of them but had difficulty getting rid of them
>all.

Well, he could've sent a few down here! As you know from previous personal
correspondance, no Desert Gobies have been available for love or money here
in the ACT (Australian Capital Territory) for several years. Nobody seems
to have any spare for us in any other state in Australia, of any locality
type or species, from what I gathered asking around. This may have changed
recently, as I have given up pestering people for them as a lost cause.

>I agree that fishkeepers who are likely to be involved in conservation
>efforts will be club members. However, we are not talking about
>maintaining endangered species.

Sorry, I was under the misapprehension that we were. It was from this POV
that all my arguments flowed.

>We are talking about a commercially
>available fish in the general aquarium trade. Many of the endangered
>species that would be maintained by club members are not going to be very
>commercial fish otherwise they would be bred commercially and they
>would be more widely available. My case in point here is the rosy barb
>(or is the cherry barb, I forget, it may even be another barb, someone
>want to set me straight here?) Anyway, which ever barb it is, the fish
>is extinct in the wild, yet remains quite abundant in the aquarium
>trade. Does this mean that the fish should be maintained by club
>fishkeepers because it is "endangered"? Of course we need to be diligent
>with species that are maintained in this fashion, but again, if someone
>else, or another group is "looking after" a species then I think
>aquarists should concentrate on something else that isn't being "looked
>after".

This raises the possibility that one group will assume that a particular
species is being maintained by another group... But then if we are talking
about commercially available fishes the argument is moot.

Regards, Andrew Boyd
___________________________________________________________________
Andrew Boyd - andrew at pcug.org.au - http://www.pcug.org.au/~andrew
Ceteris Parbiter - Cavem Draconem
___________________________________________________________________