I think that it is inevitable that we will lose species in captivity
through interest moving on. What I would like to help is the strains
genetic robustness.
>No one person can maintain
> all the species we now have. However, as I mentioned in an earlier post we
> have to find a rather simple way to do it, certainly at the beginning. If we
> can get a number of people involved then we can start adding extras. I have
> been involved in species maintainance with other fish species (cichlids) and
> we had the same problem trying to get other hobbyists interested.
>
There are a lot of things to keep and only so much time to spend on them.
Getting people interested is not so easy, I have found that fish people
are often uncoperative in terms of releasing fish to those not a member
of the right group. There are several people around here who would not
pass on a fish if they were the only people to have it because that would
mean that someone else now has the thing. This an attitude that really
needs to be broken down.
> Perhaps we could publish a species list in club publications with a rating
> system based on the number of individual populations in captivity.
sounds good to me, but chris just mentioned one of the major problems of
the exercise, getting the information back from the membership.
> People who keep large collections also have to reduce the number of
> individuals per spawning because they take up a lot of space. When I spawn
> some species I only produce a small number basically for my own purpose. I
> think my collection of species (including Blue-eyes)is now around fifty and
> have a number of species that require spawning but they will just have to
> wait.
That is a major league arguement for getting things out to the general
public to me.
>
> The problem is finding someone who's dedicated to the species. A good
> example is the Red-finned Blue-eye - How many people who had them still have
> them? another is the Honey Blue-eye - many thousands have been wild
> collected over the years but how many permanent populations are in
> captivity? These are just two examples, there are many more.
I would love to have a go at both of these as well as a coule more of the
gertrudae forms, I will not be around here all that much longer and it is
for that reason that I do not want to get them and then leave them to
someone else.
>
> We also need to settle this gentics issue as I think we are just stumbling
> around in the dark. Perhaps we (ANGFA,RSG,IRG) could get genetic
> "fingerprints" of some of the newer wild or F1 species and then somewhere
> down the track check captive stocks to see if there has been any changes. I
> think this will be the only way we know what happens. At least it would be
> something tangible! Otherwise we will just be argueing the pros and cons
> forever.
It would be interesting, I am just not sure as to the best way around
some of the technical aspects. Peter and I have been having some off line
chats about that. There is something to be said about maintaining a
strain and it is not such a trivial issue as some would have us believe.
Peter Hughes