The only problem I have with this is the availability in the hobby criteria
- this is an extremely fluid variable (hey, there's a pun in that! sorry.) -
the commercials will sell what sells, and the fickle fish-buying public
change their minds with monotonous regularity. Remember the MiniReef fad,
the Giant Central American Cichlid fad, the African Rift Lake Cichlid fad?
Maybe it's different here in Australia - we don't have the population base
to buffer these changes in "fad". And then there are the species that are
common in the hobby, but difficult (for me, anyhow) to breed, such as
Cardinal and Neon Tetras.
By the same token, it is good to recognise people who are working with
"unpopular" species.
>Secondly, the breeder gets bonus points for each successive generation of a
>species presented. Most BAP programs only allow you to get points for a fish
>once; this one was designed to encourage people to maintain a particular
>species for many years. There's no way to ensure that the fish aren't inbred,
>of course, but we wanted to at least recognize the concept of (gasp) working
>with the same species for many years.
The way that our local fish club got around this was to have seperate
cumulative and annual BAP awards: a species bred is recognised only once for
the cumulative totals, but once a year for the annuals. This system has,
however, fallen into disuse, and we are looking at ways of revamping the BAP.
>I have not lived in VT for several years but will be heading out there in a
>couple of weeks & will see if I can get information on how well this aspect
>of the BAP is working. I'll post the info here if anyone's interested.
I for one would be grateful if you would post the info here, or email it to
me if there are objections to sending it here.
Regards, Andrew Boyd
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Andrew Boyd - andrew at pcug.org.au - http://www.pcug.org.au/~andrew
Ceteris Parbiter - Cavem Draconem
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