<The practice of releasing males only to maintain the market has been around
<for quite a while - I seem to remember the issue involved werneri, boesmani
<and even praecox for a time at least but it is doomed to failure in the
<long term just like some of the petty excuses used to exclude peaceful
<attractive desirable aquarium species from being imported to Australia. In
<the words of the 'bard" - "where there's a will there's a way!"
As we in Germany had the first experiences with many of the rainbowfish imported
for the trade I can maybe give you some informations on selling males only.
Iriatherina werneri was imported first in 1973. Until about 1984 only males were
sold by the exclusive breeder of this species. This made me so angry that this was
one of the major reasons to found the IRG in 1986. However, at that time the first
females appeared on the market. It was told that they had been stolen at the
breeder who also was a wholesaler.
I was told that the owner of the wholesale, who at that time was an older man,
sat on a chair and looked carefully into every bag of I. werneri sold if not by chance
a female had found its way into the bag. He bred the fish in masses and the females
were used as feeder fish.
A few years later again only males appeared in several shops, however, as many
breeders still had females and the contacts around the world were better, this was
just a short attempt.
As far as I remember the first captive bred M. boesemani were sold by Heiko Bleher's
wholesale and with males and females. Very soon lots of these fishes were bred in
Germany.
By the way: Somebody wrote that he head heard that Heiko's wholesale would be
financially down. Well, as I have heard (and this may be true or not) he hasn't been
owner of his wholesale since years. It is a fact that the wholesale is done by Heikos
life partner (a very nice Italian woman) for at least two years. Aquarium Rio still is
busy in the wholesale. Heiko is concentrating on his work as a publisher. He visited
many events since then (I think he has been at the ANGFA conference at least once or
twice since then) and I'm quite sure that he will also appear at the next ANGFA
conference if he has told to do so. But be sure: I just have heard that. Heiko was on
our IRG meeting in June, he was well, and had a fast car. Additionally he has been
in New Guinea at a time already when he was no longer owner of Aquarium Rio or
at least busy with the wholesale. So don't be too afraid that he won't bring any new
rainbows to the hobby, I think he is mad ;-) about rainbows and we can expect a few
more species for the hobby through him in the next few years.
Back to males only. When the first lacustris were offered in Germany (the price at that
time was 110,- DM which today is about 100 AUD or 75 US$ per piece!) there shall
have been the attempt also to sell only males to have better prices for a longer time.
However, what I heard, was, that very soon also females were sold as the breeders
were not able to distinguish the sexes (you know, it's not really easy in halfadult
fishes under retail or wholesale conditions). As a fact, this species was also sold and
bred in masses about four months after the first fish had been sold.
I don't know about any other attempt of selling males only - and you know we
Europeans always are the first to have these wonderful new species :->.
Have a nice day. Harro
Content-Type: application/octet-stream; name="absender.txt"
Content-Disposition: inline; filename="absender.txt"
Content-MD5: ccN3OJ7uKmCw9tum7jzZgw==
Attachment Converted: c:\eudora\attach\absender2.txt