According to its keeper Barbara Woodford, 61, of Gloucester, the goldfish Ginger managed to survive for 13 hours on the floor behind a cupboard after leaping out of its bowl during the night or early in the morning.

When Woodford woke up at 7 am, she found the bowl empty and started to look for her pet, but to no avail. When it was time for her to leave for work she had still not found Ginger. When Woodward returned from work around 8 pm, she feared the worst but made a new attempt and finally managed to find her missing goldfish after moving the cupboard on which the fishbowl was standing.

“I picked him up with a spatula and his mouth started moving. I put him back into the water and off he went. He was swimming fabulously. I couldn’t believe it – it was a real Christmas miracle,” Woodward explains.

Woodward received Ginger as a birthday present in August. Recently, she had noticed how her pet was jumping up out of the water a lot. “We thought nothing of it,” says Woodward. “Apparently goldfish jump when they need more oxygen, so on this occasion he obviously jumped right out.”

A spokesman for the Association of Midland Goldfish Keepers said: “Fish can survive quite a while out of the water, as long as their gills remain moist, allowing them to breathe. But this is the longest I’ve heard of a goldfish staying alive. It’s quite astonishing.“

How can I prevent accidents like this from happening?

• Avoid keeping goldfish in bowls. A normal sized goldfish bowl is actually too small to comfortably house a fish as large and active as the goldfish.
  
• If your fish repeatedly tries to jump out of its home, try to figure out why. There are many reasons why a fish will try to jump out of its home, such as low oxygen levels, poor water quality, an aquarium or bowl that is too small, or bullying tank mates. If a fish needs to breathe air at the surface, it rarely jumps out of the aquarium – it just swims to the surface and puts its mouth above the water. Some fish species will however try to escape if the oxygen level is so low that they think they are stuck in a puddle that is gradually drying out.
  
• Some fish species are natural jumpers, e.g. because they are used to catching insects above the water in the wild or because they jump out of the water to impress a mate during courtship. Such species should always be kept in covered aquariums to prevent them from ending up on the floor.
  
• Always get a second opinion. Unfortunately, many pet shops that sell goldfish bowls, betta vases and similar have tendency to downplay the requirements of these fishes. If you are told that goldfish breathe by jumping into the air, that fish tattooed with neon-colours are doing great, or that a Siamese fighting fish in a vase need no food because it will nibble on flower roots, ask for a second opinion from someone who isn’t trying to sell you something. You can for instance visit an online forum or contact an aquarium club.
  
• If you decide to give someone a pet for their birthday, make sure that you also give them all instructions needed to care for that particular pet. Also make sure that they actually want a pet and have enough time, money and dedication to care for a living creature in the long run. A goldfish can live for 40 years or more.

Scientists from three different European countries – Norway, Belgium and the UK – are now launching a new research project where the aim is to find out if cods can feel pain or not.

“Most people agree that mammals and birds can feel pain, but people are less sure about fish,” says project leader Øyvind Aas-Hansen of NOFIMA, an aquaculture research institute whose headquarters are in Tromsø, Norway.

Fish show many signs of being able to experience pain, but we still know very little about how their brains react to stimuli that would cause mammals and birds to feel pain. According to some scientists, the brain of a fish is not equipped with certain structures needed to process pain, but others believe that fish nevertheless do sense some type of pain.

What we do know is that fish show a long row of behavioural responses that could be interpreted as signs of pain, such as avoidance reactions. Fish are also capable of producing pain-relieving opiates and the fish brain is equipped with receptors for both pain and opiates.

The European researchers hope that modern medical technology, especially functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalograms (EEGs) will make it possible for them to learn more about how the cod brain actually works. The aim of the study is to indentify which parts of the cod brain that becomes activated when a cod is exposed to potentially painful stimuli, and the researchers will also study how these signals are processed.

In order to test the brain of a fish, there is no need to expose it to any type of severe or prolonged pain; a mild stimulus that simply provokes an unpleasant sensation is enough to see how the brain reacts. “We will use the same procedures as those used on healthy human volunteers,” Dr Aas-Hansen explains.

If cods are indeed able to feel pain, Dr Aas-Hansen hopes that the results of the study will be used as yet another argument in favour of keeping aquarium fish in benevolent conditions. The study is however unlikely to affect European legislation since most regulations already assume that fish can feel pain.

Dr Aas-Hansen also points out how comparative research on how the brain works in different animals can give an insight into our own human brain. “This is ground-breaking work,” he says. “No other scientists have previously studied the cod’aquarius brain this way.”

The project will run for three years and is funded by the Norwegian Research Council.

Wild-caught pets are often recommended against, since the harvest of wild caught specimen may deplete wild populations. In the Brazilian rainforest, the harvesting of popular aquarium species such as cardinal tetras have however helped prevent deforestation and made it possible for local residents to earn a living without resorting to logging, mining, cattle ranching, and slash-and-burn agriculture.

“All this is very counter-intuitive,” says Scott Dowd, an Amazon biologist at the New England Aquarium who has been researching the dark acidic waters of Rio Negro, a major Amazon tributary in Northern Brazil, for the past two decades. “You would think biologists would not want to take fish out of the rainforest. But the fish are the key to miminizing deforestation. The people’s other economic options – timber harvest, cattle ranching and gold mining – are environmental disasters.”
The Rio Negro region has been a major fish exporter for over half a century and 60 percent of local populations rely in this source of income for their sustenance. Since deforestation is known to be detrimental to the survival of financially valuable fish species like the cardinal tetra fish, the Brazilian government has protected the Rio Negro rainforest from logging and burning – at least until now. The situation may be about to change dramatically as more and more aquarium shops switch from wild-caught fish to farm-raised specimens. Wild-caught specimens are used to the dark, soft and highly acidic water conditions of Rio Negro, while farm-raised fish tend to be acclimatized to common tap-water conditions (i.e. clear water that is not very soft or acidic) and therefore easier to keep.

To prevent the market for wild-caught Rio Negro fish from collapsing, Dowd is participating in a “Buy a Fish, Save a Tree” campaign. “The local fisheries look like they are headed for collapse”, Down explains. “But there’s hope that this threat can be addressed. If you ask fish hobbyists if they care about the environment, a very high percentage say they care about it deeply.”

Dowd hopes that the “Buy a Fish, Save a Tree” branding will help Brazilian fish harvesters to benefit from the growing trend of cause labelling, such as Fair Trade and FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).

Another important step in making wild-caught Rio Negro fish a popular alternative to farmed-raised specimens is to adapt them to normal aquarium conditions, and the New England Aquarium is therefore helping local fishermen to efficiently acclimatize wild-caught tetras to a pH-value around 7.0.

Dowd also hope to take advantage of the Internet, by assigning lot numbers to every batch of aquarium fish caught in Rio Negro. “Imagine if you could go online and see a video of the actual fisherman who caught your tropical fish, says Dowd. “I want hobbyists to know directly how their choices can affect people thousands of miles away and how they can make a contribution to saving the rainforest. Things don’t look good, but we can begin to turn all of this around.”

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation is now carrying out tests in hope of finding out if bacteria can aid them in their struggle against invasive mussel species that are threatening to spread across the West’s waterways.

During the summer of 2008, a preliminary test was executed at Davis Dam on the Colorado River at Laughlin in Nevada. In this dam, Quagga mussels (Dreissena rostriformis bugensis) were exposed to dead bacteria of the Pseudomonas fluorescens species, a non-infectious bacterium that is commonly found in water, soil and food.

Quagga Mussels

During the first test the mussels where exposed to bacteria in jars, but the next test will take place in 10-20 gallon aquariums to in order to more accurately mimic real dam conditions. Water will flow through the aquariums, but will not be released back into the river – it will instead be disposed of through an evaporation pond. A third experiment is also planned, where bacteria will be released in a domestic water intake line which is currently encrusted with a 2-3 inches thick layer of mussels (approximately 5-7.5 cm).

“We are always looking for new, more effective techniques for managing mussels, and this one looks very safe and very promising,” says Reclamation scientist Fred Nibling. “We’ll have a series of tests where we’re going to be testing off-line, off the river, so we can have the data to where we can apply for the permits to test elsewhere.

If the initial testing proves to be successful, the Bureau of Reclamation hopes to have a larger scale test approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation got the idea to use Pseudomonas fluorescens from Daniel Molloy, a researcher at the New York State Museum who discovered that both zebra and quagga mussels died if they ingest the bacterium. He confirmed the effect in 1998 and the method was patented by the museum. Eventually, the Californian firm Marrone Organic Innovations was awarded a National Science Foundation grant to commercialize the technology.

According to Molloy’s research, a mussel needs to ingest a high density of a strain of the bacteria in order for the bacteria to be lethal. If the density is high enough, a toxin inside the bacterium cell will efficiently devastate the digestive tract of the animal.

One advantage with Pseudomonas fluorescens compared to conventional anti-mussel treatments like chlorine is that mussels recognize chlorine as dangerous and close their feeding valves to keep the chemical out. They do however happily devour Pseudomonas fluorescens. Another important aspect is that research has found that Pseudomonas fluorescens does not kill fish or shellfish.

If large scale testing also proves successful, the Bureau of Reclamation say they wish to meet with municipal public works and water authority officials before the bacterium is put into general use. “We want to make sure they’re very comfortable and they have a chance to ask questions,” says Nibbling.

Zebra mussels

Otto the Octopus, an eight-armed resident of the Sea Star Aquarium in Germany, baffled his caregivers by deliberately short-circuiting an annoyingly bright light that shone into his otherwise cosy aquarium.

According to staff, the marine exhibition began to suffer from mysterious blackouts to which the puzzled electricians could not find any reasonable explanation. This prompted the aquarium staff to take shifts sleeping on the floor in hope of solving the mystery. “It was a serious matter because it shorted the electricity supply to the whole aquarium that threatened the lives of the other animals when water pumps ceased to work,” a spokesman of the aquarium explains.

During the third night, a befuddled aquarium crew found out the reason behind the incidents – an annoyed octopus that had realised that he could extinguish the irritating lamp by climbing onto the rum of his tank and squirting a jet of water at it.

“We knew that he was bored as the aquarium is closed for winter, and at two feet, seven inches Otto had discovered he was big enough to swing onto the edge of his tank and shoot out a the 2000 Watt spot light above him with a carefully directed jet of water“, says the spokes man.

Octopuses are clever and curious animals and they can easily grow bored in captivity. If you wish to keep an octopus, it is very important to constantly provide it with challenging tasks and things to explore to keep it happy and healthy. An octopus must also have suitable caves or similar in the aquarium where it can relive stress, carry out its natural behaviours – and hide from pesky lights. You can read more about octopuses in captivity here.

New species of catfish from the Ngounié River

Belgian and French scientist[1] have now described and named an African catfish sporting a striking pattern of irregular whitish lines and dots over a black background. The fish has been given the name Synodontis ngouniensis after its type locality, the Ngounié River drainage. The Ngounie River is the last and second most important tributary of the famous Ogowe River and flows through the country Gabon in west central Africa. The species can also be found in the Nyanga River drainage in Congo. (Nyanga is a smaller coastal river that runs through southern Gabon and northern Congo.)

The researchers collected Synodontis ngouniensis from a turbid part of the Ngounié River, where the temperature was 24°C (roughly 75°F) and the pH-value 8.4 (very alkaline).

Synodontis ngouniensis is a mochokid catfish. Its dorsal spine has a smooth anterior margin except for 1-4 feeble serrations that can be seen on the distal part. The species also has a maxillary barbel with a smooth membrane which is proximally at least as broad as the barbel thread and located on the posterior basal two third of the barbel. The fish is equipped with 12-19 mandibular teeth, 10-13 gill rakers on the ceratobranchial of the first branchial arch, and a triangular humeral process.

If you want to learn more, you can find the description of the fish in Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters 19[2].

New species of catfish from the Woleu River

This new species of mochokid catfish has long been confused with another similar species, Synodontis batesii, but has now been recognized as a species in its own right thanks to the work of researchers John Friel and John Sullivan. The new species has been given the name Synodontis woleuensis after the river Woleu and has is known to be present in the Woleu/Mbini/Uoro and Ntem basins of Gabon and Equatorial Guinea in west central Africa.

Synodontis woleuensis sports a dark background colour decorated with numerous small light spots of irregular shapes. A pair of light spots can be seen anterior and posterior to the adipose fin, and a narrow depigmented curved band runs along the anterior margin of the caudal fin. Another notable feature is the serrations on the anterior edge of the dorsal spine of the fish. 

If you wish to learn more about this new species, you can find the description in the latest issue of Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia[3].

Time to reveal a new WordPress theme. I learned a lot when I made the first two WordPress themes below and I thought it was about time I made an aquarium related one. This is after all first and foremost an aquarium site. It is a simple theme with widget ready sidebars and gravatar support. It is also ad ready and the download file includes instructions on how to activate ads. I hope someone will like and have use for it. You can download this theme Here

Official description: Description: A clean simple SEO optimized 3 column blue aquarium inspired theme. The theme has two widget ready sidebars and gravatar support. The theme is Adsense (and other ads) ready and display ads in the 3 first post on each page to comply with Adsense TOS. Features a bio box that can be edited independently of the side bars. Theme is fully compatible with WordPress 2.6. Find more of my themes on my theme page

Tags: valid CSS, white, blue, orange, yellow, 3 columns, 3 column, three column, three columns, fixed width, widget, widget ready, simple, right sidebar, left sidebar, valid CSS, Adsense ready, add ready, bio box, gravatar support, gravatar, minimalistic, funky, fish, aquarium, pet, goldfish, pets

Lobsters caught in the Northumberland Strait in eastern Canada are normally black, so it is easy to imagine the surprise fisherman Danny Knockwood of the Elsipogtog First Nation must have felt when he suddenly found himself face to face with a yellow and white specimen. Knockwood made the unusual catch while pulling his traps out of the sea near Richibucto Village, where the Richibucto Rivers empties into the northern Atlantic.

The Canadian fishermen named his new pet Autumn and made a short video of the animal for YouTube. As of October 8, the video had managed to attract several hundred viewers – some of them suggesting that Knockwood should eat his rare find.

Knockwood has however decided to keep Autumn away from the boiling water and has instead managed to find her a new home at the Aquarium and Marine Centre in Shippagan, a museum where marine animals are housed in real seawater. The marine centre is already home to a substantial collection of oddly coloured lobsters, so Autumn will fit right in.

“In captivity, the lobster could live for many years,” says Curator Aurele Godin of the Shippagan Aquarium and Marine Centre. “And I’ve got many other coloured ones — blue ones, yellow ones, orange and blacks. Every year fishermen come up with them. They call me and I go pick them up.”

Instead of showing dark spots on a dark green base colour like normal lobsters, Autumn sports a vivid yellow colour on top while her underside is almost white. According to a specialist from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who examined the video and photos of Autumn, genetic defects can cause the shell of a lobster to develop strange and unusual colours. The specialist also confirmed that Autumn is a female lobster and estimated her to be roughly 10 years of age.

Until Autumn is transported to the museum, she will be residing in a an underwater cage near Knockwood’s home.

The below story is unrelated to the first one but is still worth a look as it shows how big lobster can grow:

The young white shark brought to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on August 27 has now been released back into the wild after 11 days on exhibit. She was captured on August 16 in Santa Monica Bay and has now been safely returned to the same waters. During her stay at the Monterey Bay Aquarium she lived in their million-gallon Outer Bay exhibit, but despite her relatively roomy accommodation she only fed once and the staff decided that she would be better of in the wild.

A white shark

“These decisions are always governed by our concern for the health and well-being of these animals under our care,” says Jon Hoech, director of husbandry for the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

On September 7, the young female was released in offshore waters in the Santa Barbara Channel at 1:30 p.m. (Pacific Time). Before being released, she was tagged with a tracking device that will provide researchers with data on her life in the ocean. For 148 days, the pop-up tag will collect information about geographical location, depths, and water temperature. After this period, the tag will pop free and deliver the collected data via satellite.

As of now, a total of four White Sharks with tracking tags have been released from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. The three other sharks did however stay longer at the aquarium before going a back to the wild; between four and six months. Together with their research partners, the Monterey Bay Aquarium has tagged and tracked 18 juvenile white sharks off Southern California as a part of their “White Shark Conservation Research Project”. The aquarium is also involved in the project “Tagging of Pacific Predators” (TOPP) led by Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station, which has tracked 143 adult white sharks off the Central Coast using data-collecting tags.

If you wish to know more about the white shark research at the Monterey Bay Aquarium you can visit www.montereybayaquarium.org/whiteshark/.

For many aquarists, the joy of keeping an aquarium is not only about watching colourful fish dart around in the living room, it is also a way of learning more about the delicate web we call an ecosystem and how dead matter and living organisms interact with each other to create an environment where life can not only exist but flourish. It therefore comes as no surprise that you can find a lot of environmentally conscious aquarists, and that many of today’s expert biologists and wildlife authorities were steered into the path of environmental science at a very young age while striving to keep the inhabitants of their fish tank alive. Keeping an aquarium can unfortunately be a problematic hobby for the environmentally conscious, but don’t loose heart – there are loads of things that you can do to make your aquarium less of a burden for mother earth. As a matter of fact, many aquarists have actually helped in preservation work, e.g. by keeping and breeding endangered fish from severely damaged habitats, thus preventing species from becoming completely eradicated.

1.) Pick species that appreciate the same temperature as you do

Keeping an aquarium heated can require loads of energy and dig a large hole in your pocketbook. Many aquarists automatically chose tropical species in need of a temperature in the 75-82ºF (24-28ºC) range, despite the fact that they keep their homes heated up to 70°F (21°C) or so. By choosing subtropical species that prefer roughly the same temperature as you do you can save considerably amounts of energy in the long run. It can however still be a good idea to keep a heater with a thermostat in the aquarium as a precaution against sudden drops in temperature. The smaller your aquarium, the more rapidly it will loose heat if the surrounding temperature drops. Choose a supplier that sells green electricity.

2.) Never release fish or other creatures into the wild

If you for any reason cannot care for your aquarium inhabitants anymore, you need to find them a new keeper or euthanize them. It might be tempting to release them into the wild, but this is a big no-no. Releasing living organisms into environments where they don’t belong can wreck havoc with existing ecosystems and must therefore be avoided. Even if you keep species that occur naturally in your local environment you shouldn’t release them back into the wild because they may have come in contact with non-native bacteria, viruses, parasites etcetera in the aquarium that could cause problems for wild flora and fauna.

Fish are so called cold blooded animals and it is therefore easy to euthanize them by decreasing the water temperature. If you need to euthanize a fish or other cold blooded aquarium creature, simply place it in a water filled container and put the container in the freezer. As the water temperature gradually decreases, the metabolism of the animal will slow down and it will fall into a comatose like state before dying.

3.) Purchase locally bred or caught fish

Instead of purchasing fish that have to be flown in from the other side of the planet, you can search for fish that are being bred or caught in your area, country or (at least) part of the world. As a bonus for you, locally bred fish are often better acclimatized to the tap water in your area and more prone to breed in captivity.

4.) Turn your back on unsuitable harvesting methods

Unfortunately, devastating harvesting methods like dynamite fishing are still fairly common within the aquarium trade. Always make an effort to find out which technique that has been used to catch the fish you’re interested in purchasing. It can be hard to find unbiased information, but it is still worth trying. Paying a little extra for fish that has not been caught with dynamite and similar can also be a very sound investment since unsuitable harvesting methods tend to cause a lot of damage to the fish and decrease its chances of survival in captivity.

5.) Participate in breeding programs

By participating in a breeding program you can help supply the aquarium market with captive bred fish and ease the strain on wild populations. You can naturally do this on your own as well, but joining a breeding program is a great way of getting information on how to breed high quality fish and avoid common pitfalls. You may also be able to purchase or borrow hard to find species to use in your breeding efforts, especially if you have had success in breeding similar species in the past.

6.) Keep the fish alive

This last point might seem like a no-brainer, but many beginner aquarists are coaxed by fish shops into thinking that four months is a perfectly normal lifespan for all sorts of aquarium fish and that you should expect to constantly purchase new fish to keep your tank populated. It is true that some species have a natural life span of less than six months, but the overwhelming majority of known fish species live much longer than this and there are actually quite a few species that will live for 10 years or more in a well kept aquarium. If all your fish goes belly up after just a few months in your tank, you’re probably doing something wrong. If aquarists all over the world would become better at actually keeping their fish alive, less energy would have to be devoted to transporting replacement fish, and it would also alleviate the strain on wild populations of desirable aquarium fish.

So, how can we increase our chances of keeping healthy and long-lived fish in our tanks? First and foremost, always read up on each species you wish to keep before you make a purchase. By learning about a species preferred environment, temperature, water chemistry, diet, tank mates, and so on, you will be more apt at keeping it alive throughout its natural life span. Do not mix species with different preferences in water chemistry, temperature and similar. You might very well be able to keep them alive, but they will not thrive and they will be more prone to health problems which increase the risk of an untimely death.

It is also important to read up on aquarium management techniques and always strive to increase ones knowledge on general aquarium maintenance. Do not hesitate to ask more experienced aquarists for advice. Today, the Internet has made it easy to keep in touch with aquarists from all over the world through aquarium forums and e-mail. If you’re lucky, there will also be a local aquarium club in your area.