Generic Lionfish

A turbulent, bizarre and downright strange year for fish, our list of the Top Ten Fish Stories of 2010 will have you scratching your head, wiping away tears and laughing all in one sitting. To hold you over until 2011, we put together the wildest and most comprehensive list of fish stories. So sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Top Ten Fish Stories of 2010

1. Nothing affected fish more strongly in 2010 than the BP Gulf Oil Spill . Going down in history as the worst man-made ecological disaster in antiquity, the repercussions of this tragedy are truly stunning. According to the official report released January 1, 2011 by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, “Organisms are exposed to oil through ingestion, filtration, inhalation, absorption, and fouling.” With ecological and economical losses proving difficult to pinpoint exactly, 2010 will nonetheless go down in the fish-histories as a time of great doom, death and terrible loss.
2. Making a strong statement for endangered and extinct species the world over, the Lake Saiko salmon reemerged from the pages of history in 2010. Thought to be extinct for over half a century, the “kunimasu” or “black kokanee” salmon materialized from the murky beyond, laying testament to the true adaptability of this remarkable species. Like the infamous snail darter fish of the Tellico Dam controversy, the black kokanee baffled researchers and proved once again that life always finds a way. Look also to salmon in Alaska and Derbyshire England for inspiration – both species experiencing respective rebounds in 2010. We’ll have to get one of these guys in an aquarium , just in case they try to run off on us again!
3. In 2010, high-fiving a fish became possible for the first time with the discovery of a mysterious “pink handfish” off the Australian island of Tasmania. Walking with its fins rather than swimming, this fish marks an exciting chapter in the voluminous and burgeoning book of “unknowns” discovered in the world’s oceans to date. Indeed, on the weird-o-meter, this fish gives the angler fish (with its spooky, head-dangling light bulb) a run for its money.
4. The Bluefin Tuna has been in the news at every turn in 2010. Between the BP oil spill and over-fishing sparking controversy in the EU, this species of fish should be on every fish-aficionados mind.
5. Although mammals, dolphins made a statement in 2010 that spoke volumes about the difference between mammalian brains and those of fish. In the wake of the BP oil spill, unlike sea turtles or fish, dolphins showed their smarts by swimming away from deadly oil plumes. What does this tell us about fish? Simply put, fish need more help in a human dominated world, which should in good conscience influence policy-making in the coming years.
6. Try squeezing one of these suckers into a fish tank and you might have the makings of a freak show on your hands! One of 38 species discovered around Greenland since 1992, the “longhead dreamer” anglerfish came seemingly screaming off the pages of your favorite science fiction novel in 2010 to send chills up the spines of people worldwide. Not only does this fish look like a monster found on a 14th Century sea map, it illustrates the vastness of the true “final frontier” – the Earth’s mysterious and largely unexplored oceans. Knowing more about the surface of the moon than about our own oceans, this species has shown mankind that we have only scraped the surface on what lies beneath the briny beyond. So Bigfoot, move aside! There are countless species yet to be discovered beneath the world’s waves.
7. Calling to mind the archetypal image of a mad scientist bringing a new species to life —“It’s Alive! It’s Alive”—“Transgenic salmon ” made their real debut in 2010 as mankind’s most recent installment in a long line of playing god. Modified by scientists for human consumption, what was once an Atlantic salmon has been spliced with the DNA of two other fish species to create a hybrid that reaches full size in just half the time of a regular salmon. One has to wonder, is this exciting, or just plain scary?
8. Mankind’s interest in missing links led to the repeal of longstanding Darwinian Theory pertaining to a species of hybrid that formerly spanned the gap between tetrapods and fish. A Tiktaalik fossil that was once accepted as the missing link between fish and tetrapods was recently supplanted for an even older fossil discovered in Poland of tetrapod tracks that tell quite a different story. This new evidence has effectively set scientists back to their laboratories, searching for the true missing link between fish and tetrapods.
9. People are finding new and surprisingly simple solutions to battle invasive fish species in the Florida Keys. A rising star in the invasive fish ranks, the lionfish has overtaken the warm, pristine waters of the Florida Keys in 2010. In the words of the Associated Press, people in the Keys are taking the tact, “If you can’t beat them, eat them,” with the Reef Environmental Education Foundation most notably releasing “The Lionfish Cookbook.” Now, if we could only find a way to make the zebra mussel or lamprey eel appetizing, we would really be in business.
10. Just when you thought things couldn’t get any stranger, enter the infamous Snakehead fish of Australia. Sure, we’ve all seen scary looking fish before, but before now, we only worried about them in the water. That’s right, this invasive species, known to inhabit Oceania, is worried to make landfall in Australia if action isn’t taken to curb the spread of this strange beast. So what makes this species so strange? It’s a fish that can breathe air and hunt on land. Enough said.

Guest post by: FishTankWarehouse.com

Fish with Ich Credit: Dehai Xu, Ph.D

According to new research presented by Dehai Xu, Ph.D. at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS)*, a vaccine against the feared ich disease might be available in the foreseeable future.

Ich is a disease dreaded by hobby aquarists and professional fish farmers alike. It is caused by the ciliated protozoan Ichthyophthirius multifiliis (hence the name ich) and can easily kill of all the fish in an aquarium or fish pond. Fortunately, it seems to be unable to infect humans. Among aquarists, it is chiefly known as White Spot Disease since the parasites cause small white nodules to form on the skin and in the gills of infested fish.

Today, ich outbreaks in large commercial fish farms are often treated by adding hundreds of gallons of a formaldehyde solution to the water. This is far from an ideal solution, since formaldehyde can be toxic to both humans and fish. It is classified as a known human carcinogen by the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and is associated with both nasal sinus cancer and nasopharyngeal cancer. And as anyone who has ever combated ich in an aquarium knows, ich treatment is something you have to do over and over again since the parasite is usually only sensitive to treatment during one of its multiple life stages. This means repeatedly adding large quantities of formaldehyde solution to the pond. Even when formaldehyde ich treatment is successful, it provides no long-lasting effects since the fish develops no immunity. If new outbreaks occur, a new treatment cycle has to be carried out.

It is therefore no surprise that the series of vaccine tests carried out by Dr. Xu and his colleagues Dr. Phillip Klesius and Dr. Craig Shoemaker, who are with the U. S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in Alabama, have sparked vibrant interest within the aquatic world. For anyone from commercial fish farmers to public aquaria and hobby fish keepers, an ich vaccine would be a dream come true.

“Outbreaks of the parasitic disease caused by Ichthyophthirius (Ich) can result in losses of 50-100 percent of fish,” Dr Xu explained while presenting the team’s findings at the ACS meeting. “The disease is very common, and almost every home fish hobbyist has encountered it. Once the parasite infects fish, and starts growing in the skin, fins, and gills, there is no really effective treatment. Ich causes losses estimated at $50 million annually. It would be much better to prevent the disease. To vaccinate against Ich, you would need much less medication, and it would not pose an apparent threat to the environment. And you would need just one treatment to make the fish immune for life.”

In their efforts to develop a vaccine, Xu and his colleagues have focused on the use of so-called trophonts.

The ich protozoa goes though three life stages:

• The ich trophozoite feeds inside the nodule (”the white spot”) on the skin or gill of the fish.

• The ich trophozoite falls off and becomes an ich tomont, i.e. it enters an encapsulated dividing stage. During this stage, the tomont is attached to plants, gravel or other objects in the environment.

• The ich parasite will then start dividing itself, producing trophonts. The trophonts will move around freely in the water, looking for fish to infect.

Trophonts burrow into the skin and fills of a fish and start to feed, thus completing the cycle. When Xu, Klesius and Shoemaker began their research project very little was known about how fish develop protective immunity to trophonts, so the researchers basically had to start from scratch.

Eventually, they were able to show that vaccination with live ich theronts and trophonts killed with high-frequency sound waves stimulated production of protective antibodies in channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus)

“This study demonstrated that vaccines against Ich induced protective immunity and could provide a unique solution to prevent this parasitic disease through vaccination,” Xu said. “An Ich vaccine would have great impact by preventing the disease, minimizing loss of valuable fish and increasing profitability of aquaculture.”

Injecting fish in a laboratory setting is one thing, administering a vaccine to thousands or even millions of fish in a huge commercial farm is another, so the next goal will be to find a way of carrying out large-scale vaccinations. It might for instance be possible to produce a large quantity of Ich antigen and then creating a vaccine that can be administered as food or in a “bath”.

For aquarists however, injecting each fish with the vaccine might actually be a feasible solution, provided of course that an injectable vaccine would be produced for the aquarium market.

* http://portal.acs.org

A brand spanking new species of Hemigrammus tetra has been categorized, analyzed and described by a group of ichthyologists from Brazil. The new species makes its home in the Tocantins River drainage out in the central area of Brazil.

This tetra Hemigrammus, dubbed Hemigrammus tocantinsi, was described in the recently published issue of the journal Neotropical Ichthyology by Fernando Carvalho, Vinicius Bertaco, and Fernando Jerep.

What exactly sets this Hemigrammus tocantinsi apart from the other Hemigrammus tetra? Well for starters, Hemigrammus tetra has 15 to 17 anal-fin rays, horizontal stripes which narrow towards the back and get wider towards the front, as well as sporting one or two eye teeth. This new species of tetra likes to make its home in forested streams, where it lives in peaceful co-existence with Aspidoras albater, Astyanax sp., Characidium stigmosum, Corumbataia veadeiros, and Trichomycterus sp.

The Hemigrammus tocantinsi has another rather interesting thing going for it. Its dietary habits were extensively studied, and it was found that the Hemigrammus tocantinsi has a diet which consists mainly of terrestrial and aquatic insects.

If you would like more information on this very exciting topic, please see the paper: Carvalho, FR, VA Bertaco & FC Jerep (2010) Hemigrammus tocantinsi: a new species from the upper rio Tocantins basin, Central Brazil (Characiformes: Characidae). Neotropical Ichthyology 8, pp. 247–254.

The Council of Agriculture in Taiwan surprised the world last week by stating that they had successfully created fluorescent cichlids. These cichlids were created by breeding  trangenic Convict cichlids and Angelfish.

The creation of this fish was the brain child of the Academia Sinica, Taiwan’s national research academy, and took just shy of 7 years to accomplish.

Some other innovative fish that this group has cooked up are the GloFish Zebra danio (Danio rerio) and the fluorescent Medaka (Oryzias latipes). These fish have been authorized for sale, and quite popular, since 2003 when they first hit the market in Taiwan as an aquarium fish.

Dr. Chih-Yi Chen, the head of the investigative team which created this cichlid, has stated that creating this cichlid took a lot of effort because of the lack of control they had over the spawning process, as compared to the smaller fish they previously tinkered with.

The scientists had to literally sit by the aquarium and wait for the fish to spawn so that the gene fragments could be immediately inserted into the Convict cichlid eggs. If it is not injected immediately, the results don’t seem to take.. This made the whole process very fickle.

An even greater obstacle was overcome, when they were in the process of spawning the fluorescent angelfish, as the couldn’t use micro-injection techniques in the same manner as with the Convict cichlids. In this case, they needed to apply an electric field to the cell membrane, in order to inject the gene fragments.

Well, they pulled it off.. The only question now is… What the heck is it good for? A fish nightlight?

Fluorescent Convict cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) - Pic by JY Lin Co Ltd

The low temperatures that’s been holding the state of Florida in a firm grip this winter is causing troubles for tropical fish raised in outdoor ponds. Aquarium fish farmers report losing up to 50% of popular tropical species to the cold, and a severe guppy shortage has already emerged – boosted by the fact that Americans are more inclined to purchase guppies and other aquarium inhabitants during the winter season.

Roughly half of the tropical fish sold in the United States is raised in Florida, a state heavily dependant on its warm climate. The fist fish farmers showed up here as early as the 1930s when it was still possible to purchase cheap land around Miami, but nowadays a majority of the fish Florida farms is found in the lake-rich part of Florida located between Tampa and Orlando. Up until a few years ago, the number one cargo shipment out of Tampa International Airport was tropical fish.

Fish native to tropical parts of the world normally find it difficult to stay alive if the water temperature drops below 60 degrees F (15 degrees C) and even temperatures around 70 degrees F (20 degrees C) may have a detrimental effect on their immune system. It is therefore easy to imagine what happens if the air temperature suddenly drops below the freezing point – as it has done in Florida this winter.

And even in situations where the cold isn’t severe enough to instantly kill the fish it can send them into a sedentary state where they fail to hide from predators like hungry birds, especially if living in unplanted ponds offering few places to hide. Many fish eating birds have been forced to see their normal hunting grounds being sealed off by ice and fish farms struggling to keep the water temperature up constitute a highly appealing alternative when the hunger sets in.

In desperate attempts to save their fish from freezing to death or being eaten by predators, Florida farmers have been covering their ponds with plastic sheets and pumped in warm water. When the cold turned out to be more than just a short dip, those who could scrambled to get as many fish as possible indoors. Many farmers have been forced to prioritize older fish close to the size needed for shipping, leaving younger fry behind to die.

Farmers that have lost more than 50 percent of their fish are entitled to financial relief from the Department of Agriculture if they file a crop insurance claim.

Below you will find my review of the Reef One  60L/16 gallon BiOrb. The orb was provided to me by the company, but this is not paid advertising space. If I’ll end up hating the orb, you’ll know about it. Other companies that are interested in having their product reviewed here are welcomed to contact me, provided that they understand that giving me something for free doesn’t guarantee a positive review.

BiOrb 60 Classic Collection review – setting it up
I am going to start by saying a few words about Reef One. Reef One develops aquarium products sold in more than 20 countries. Their goal is to be innovative and offer new exiting products, and as a part of this quest they have developed a line of small aquariums and BiOrbs of which I will review the BiOrb 60.

This is an initial review based on my experiences of setting up the BiOrb. It will be followed by a second review when I have had the aquarium up and running for a few weeks and know how it works over time.

The BiOrb arrived as a big package in the mail; 60 cm x 60 cm (24 cm x 24 in). The parcel contains everything you need to setup a simple, basic beginner aquarium. You get a 5 stage internal filter, ceramic media, air pump, plug top 12 volt transformer, halogen light unit, water treatment, plastic plants and even some fish food. The equipment is plastic but does not feel cheap or tacky and can be used in most settings without looking out of place.

Included in the package is a manual on how to setup the tank, and I personally find the manual easy to understand and follow. It should allow even a beginner aquarist to set up his or her first aquarium without much ado. If you are an experienced fish keeper, you are probably already familiar with the steps of the manual that doesn’t specifically pertain to the orb itself.

As mentioned above, the BiOrb comes with its own filtration system. It is designed to promote biological filtration and is surprisingly quiet. Unlike many other filter systems, this one won’t be a problem in the bedroom or office. Since I haven’t had the BiOrb running for very long I don’t know if the filter system works well or not; I will get back to it in my follow up review.

The filter is designed to allow you to setup the BiOrb as a marine tank if you get the marine tank conversion kit, but I decided to set it up as a freshwater tank for this review because I believe that more people will use it for freshwater. After all, the quantity of freshwater aquarists vastly outnumbers that of marine fish keepers. If you decide to set it up as a marine tank it will give you the option to keep marine creatures that aren’t suitable for normally rectangular aquariums. Jellyfish are for instance prone to get stuck in corners, something that won’t be a problem in a sphere shaped tank like the BiOrb.

The BiOrb can be put to together in a short amount of time, but you should nevertheless wait at least a week or two before you add the fish since you need to cycle the aquarium first. This is true even if you use the included water treatment from Reef One or any other type of starter kit – regardless of what the bottles or the staff of your local fish store might say.

The tank looks good at once after it has been setup and I have at this point not found any problems with it. It seems like a good product at this point. The only thing I might complain about is that the advanced LED light that simulates real daylight isn’t included in the standard package, but that would on the other hand make the package more expensive and for most beginner aquarists the included halogen lights will suffice.

I must however admit that I might be a bit hesitant to buy this product myself for one reason and one reason alone: the price. Sure, it is a nice product, but you could get a larger tank for the same price – or the same size for a lower price – if you went for a regular rectangular or square tank. In other words; the BiOrb is a fine tank but at £164.99* it is a pricy choice. Is it worth the money? Well, that’s up to you and will depend on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a low-cost beginner tank, than no, I wouldn’t recommend the BiOrb. If you on the other hand have some extra cash to spend and are in the market for a sleek orb that fits your interior design in a highly visible space like your living room or corporate office, than yes, this might be the right one for you.

You can read more about Reef One and their product line on their webpage, where you can also order their products.

*£164.99 is 264 USD or 183 Euros.

Taiwan plans to set up an aquarium fish R&D and export centre in 2011 in an effort of becoming Asia’s main aquarium fish exporter, a Council of Agriculture (COA) official said Wednesday.

Construction is scheduled to commence next year in the Pingtung Agricultural Biotechnology Park (PABP).

Right now, the yearly Taiwanese export of aquarium fish is no larger than 3 million USD, while Singapore has an annual export valued well above 60 million USD.

Chen Chien-pin, head of the preparatory office of the PABP, predicts that the value of the Taiwanese aquarium fish export will exceed that of Singapore when the centre as been in operation for five years.

The estimated price tag for the new facility is 1.19 billion New Taiwan Dollars, which is roughly equivalent of 37 million USD.

An aquarium fish has survived seven months in a fish tank without being fed or cared for, since its owner is in police custody after being accused of killing two Chilean students and wounding three others.

When employees from Contractor’s Choice and members of the Summer Lake Homeowners Association walked into the vacant town house at Miramar Beach, Florida, they discovered what appears to be a plecostomus.

The fish was apparently overlooked when lawmen removed the other pets – fish and birds – from the home after the arrest of the pet owner Dannie Baker. The fish went unnoticed for so long because Baker’s home was closed to the homeowners association after the arrest.

“I was very upset because I thought the police had taken everything after Dannie’s arrest,” said Dianne Richmond, vice president of the homeowners association. “This poor fish has been in that boiling house with no air conditioning and nothing to eat for about seven months.”

The pleco was discovered by the fiancée of Contractor’s Choice owner, who noticed something moving in the tank and sprinkled some fish food in the water. This caused the pleco to swim out into the open to feed.

When the pleco was discovered, much of the water in its tank had evaporated and the remaining water had turned dark.

Josh Olis, an account manager at Contractor’s Choice, said he didn’t believe it when his boss told him a fish was still alive in the tank. After seeing it for himself, he and the owner refilled the tank with about 50 gallons of water. He said he will make sure the fish is fed for as long as the company is working in the home. The contractors have even given the fish a name – Theo.

“I think we’re going to accept him into the cleaning family for now,” Olis said. “He’s been living in that tank for so long, surviving off algae. I have so much respect for him, I had to name him.”

The employees at Contractor’s Choice are now looking for a permanent home for Theo.

“This poor fish has really worked for a new home,” Richmond said. “It’s a wonder he’s survived this.”

AC Comment

Although I certainly don’t recommend neglecting your plecos for seven months, I’m not very surprised that Theo was alive and kicking when they found him. Many of the catfish species commonly referred to as plecos are algae-eaters (especially when young), so if there was any light coming into the room, Theo probably had some food to eat since nobody was there scrubbing away the algae. It all comes down to how large the tank is; a big tank may generate enough algae to keep a pleco alive (albeit hungry and malnourished) for several months.

Also, the natural habitat of plecos is Central and South America, so living without air conditioning in Florida is probably not something that bothered Theo much, especially if the aquarium was placed in a location where it was sheltered from sunlight during the harshest hours of the day.

Evaporation on the other hand, that is a real threat. The build up of waste in the water was probably tolerated by Theo since the progress was slow and gradual, but eventually ending up with hardly any water due to evaporation would naturally have killed him.

Last but not least, a word of caution. Although the employees of Contractor’s Choice acted admirably and should be applauded for taking such an interested in an abandoned fish, giving Theo 50 gallons of new water was actually quite risky since such a rapid change of water quality (and probably also temperature) can be lethal to fish – especially if the tap water is also heavily chlorinated. (But this is naturally impossible to know unless you’re an aquarist so I don’t mean to sound condescending here.) If you find a neglected fish, the safest method is to gradually change water quality and temperature until conditions are ideal for that particular species.

A new cichlid species has been described from the Río Negro and Río Tacuarí basins in the Uruguay River drainage by Uruguay ichthyologists Iván González-Bergonzoni, Marcelo Loureiro and Sebastián Oviedo.

The fish has been given the name Gymnogeophagus tiraparae (picture here) after María Luisa Tirapare, a Guaraní woman who founded the town of San Borja del Yí (no longer existing) close to one of the collecting localities for this fish.

Gymnogeophagus tiraparae is found in larger rivers with clear water over both sandy and rocky bottoms where underwater vegetation is scarce. The fish is decorated with two horizontal series of moderately elongated light blue dots between the dorsal fin spines, and a series of light blue stripes between the soft rays, sometimes merging with the second series of elongated dots. Between the series of dots, the body of the fish displays a red ground colour. On this spotty fish, the caudal fin is also adorned with dots, which are vertically aligned on the distal border. The body has no transversal bands at all. Another important characteristic is how the adipose hump on the head is located deeper than the upper border of the dorsal fin.

The description was published in the most recent issue of the journal Neotropical ichthyology.

González-Bergonzoni, I, M Loureiro and S Oviedo (2009) A new species of Gymnogeophagus from the río Negro and río Tacuarí basins, Uruguay (Teleostei: Perciformes). Neotropical Ichthyology 7, pp. 19–24.

* Guaraní is a group of culturally related indigenous people of South America who speak the Guaraní language. They are chiefly found between the Paraguay River and the Uruguay River.

The catfish L239 has finally been described by science and given a proper name: Baryancistrus beggini. Ichthyologists Lujan, Arce and Armbruster described the species in a paper[1] published in the journal Copeia[2].

Baryancistrus beggini lives in Venezuela and Colombia; in Rio Guaviare and at the confluence of Rio Ventuari and Rio Orinoco. The researchers found the fish in crevices amongst boulders. By analysing stomach contents, they were able to learn that this catfish feeds on periphyton and associated microfauna growing on rocks. (Periphyton is a mixture of algae, heterotrophic microbes, cyanobacteria, and detritus that can be found attached to submerged surfaces, e.g. stones, in most underwater ecosystems.)

In the aquarium trade, L239 is known as Blue panaque or Blue-fin panaque. The name beggini was given by Lujan and his colleagues in honour of Chris Beggin, the owner of an aquarium fish store in Nashville, USA who funded the research. The species has been placed in the genus Baryancistrus, but this might have to be corrected in the future as we learn more about the tribe Ancistrini.

Baryancistrus beggini sports a uniformly dark black to brown base colour with a blue sheen and the abdomen is naked. Along each side of the body you can see a distinctive keel above the pectoral finns; a keel formed by the strongly bent first three to five plates of the midventral series. The body also features two to three symmetrical and ordered predorsal plate rows and the last dorsal-fin ray is connected to the adipose fin.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Siluriformes
Family: Loricariidae
Subfamily: Hypostominae
Tribe: Ancistrini
Genus: Baryancistrus

New species: Baryancistrus beggini