Cute Fish

[MeganL3985]

So when I went to the zoo yesterday there were some realllllllly cute fish in one of the "buildings" they have there. They're called Desert Pupfish. I'm sure some of you have heard of them! I am in love with them! :luxlove: Says they can withstand temps of anywhere from 50 F to 110 Degrees. Isn't that crazy? Said that they tolerate drastic temperature changes very well. I think they are some of the cutest fish i've seen. I wish I could get some.....but they're endangered....and most definitely won't find those at a Petsmart. lol But its nice thinking about them....:41:

[MeganL3985]

Heres a pic of one--

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[Drumachine09]

I did some reasearch, and they live less than a year.

cool looking though!

[Kuli_Loach]

Lol, are they all blue? I wouldn't mind having one if I could.

[MeganL3985]

Females are like a yellow/olive color. Pretty also, but goodluck finding them as they're endangered. But let me know if you do! lol

[ryan81986]

The only ones that turn blue are males that are ready to mate. All other times they are tan

[MeganL3985]

I did some reasearch, and they live less than a year.

cool looking though!

Yeah thats the crappy part!

[MeganL3985]

Well the ones at the zoo must have been ready to mate, b/c they were all blue.

[Nick_Pavlovski]

Are they the ones that live in one small pond on the border of the US and Mexico - amazingly, nowhere else in the world, so preserving them and breeding them up is really important, as that pond is slowly drying out?

I think I saw all this in an issue of National Geographic mag from 15 years back or so.

[ryan81986]

Well one of the reasons for them being endangered is that every year the ponds they live in pretty much dry up and the ones that survive are the ones that manage to go into what is left. The other reason they are endangered is desert development.

[Zerileous]

wow, goregeous fish. I really hope they survive outside of captivity, but sadly with our level of industrial/technological development that will be impossible for this and many other species in the long term :(.

[Nick_Pavlovski]

Well one of the reasons for them being endangered is that every year the ponds they live in pretty much dry up and the ones that survive are the ones that manage to go into what is left. The other reason they are endangered is desert development.

Ah, my memory hasn't got too many holes in it yet!
YAy!

[Chrona]

Most likely the aquarium industry will be able to raise them in captivity and keep them alive as they did the zebra pleco and now the celestial danio. As long as there is an interest in the fish, there is money to be made, heh.

[troy]

I doubt that will happen until a very long time from. I'm very surprised even a zoo would have them. Several years the already very small population went down another couple hundred because the scientists made some mistake. I think I think I also read somewhere that introduced sailfin mollys are also destroying the population. Each year a lot more habitats for wildlife are destroyed in California and the rest of the U.S. and most people don't care. It's horrible.

[Chrona]

I doubt that will happen until a very long time from. I'm very surprised even a zoo would have them. Several years the already very small population went down another couple hundred because the scientists made some mistake. I think I think I also read somewhere that introduced sailfin mollys are also destroying the population. Each year a lot more habitats for wildlife are destroyed in California and the rest of the U.S. and most people don't care. It's horrible.

The celestial danios were nearly wiped out in the course of the aquarium craze that lasted about a year. Within that time, aquarium hobbyists were able to reproduce the natural habitat of the species and now breeding them has become far more routine. It really doesn't take very long, and the environment that these fish live in require a very high tolerance to stress and an immense capability to breed that will have evolved over the last millenniums, which leads me to believe that they will be much easier to breed than say, sharks that live in an ocean that more of less is static of millions of years.

As far as people not caring, if people don't even care that hundreds of thousands of civilians are raped and murdered overseas by a brutal regime, or even about the millions of people in the US that live below the poverty line, you don't really expect them to do much about some random fish population, heh. But that's another topic, I'll get off my soap box now ;p

[troy]

Were Celestial danios endangered before the aquarium craze and were the confined to one location. They are making progress on the pupfish, but they'll need to get the population permanently stable before they'll consider putting them in the aquarium trade. The cuteness factor will weigh in to, because then people who can't properly take care of them will them. They might also be hard to care of and breed for the demand.

[Chrona]

Were Celestial danios endangered before the aquarium craze and were the confined to one location. They are making progress on the pupfish, but they'll need to get the population permanently stable before they'll consider putting them in the aquarium trade. The cuteness factor will weigh in to, because then people who can't properly take care of them will them. They might also be hard to care of and breed for the demand.

Celestial danios originated from a very small patch of wetlands in South Ameria. They are endangered because of the aquarium industry and private collectors. The idea of releasing them for public sale seemed dumb at the time, but it allowed hundreds of private breeders to take a crack, and eventually one did figure out which conditions triggered breeding and shared it with the community. Frankly, non profit conservation efforts are underfunded and can't possibly hope to accomplish such a task singlehandedly, whereas private breeders can (and will) invest thousands in equipment for a shot and breeding exclusive fish. It's the perfect model, and already in practice. The reason the government likes to contract defense projects out is because they can get multiple offers from private companies, and because there is such a large pool of knowledge and capital (and pressure from competition), one of the companies is bound to hit on good idea. Not the perfect analogy, but you get the point. Of course it's not guaranteed to work if you release them to private owners, but neither is the conservation agency guaranteed to successfully breed the fish.

[RobbieG]

The only hope that that species (the pupfish) has is that it gets picked up by the aquarium trade. Even if nobody ever stacks two bricks one on top of the other within a thousand miles of the narrow area in which it lives it is doomed. All it is going to take is a couple of overly dry years and poof - no pond - no fish.

[MeganL3985]

I read at the zoo that students involved in wildlife & natural science classes in Phoenix, Arizona are taking helicopter trips over to net pup fish. One day they brought over 400 back and are putting them in their stocking ponds so they can try to breed them. Hopefully it works.