That would be a good thing, if they pop up at petco/smart that probably means they’re not endangered
Is a zebra pleco worth it?
- Thread starter Ijustlikefish
- Start date
I had one for a bit, it was sold as a false zebra pleco. It died after around 6 months and that’s the extent of my pleco keeping other than commons or BNs
It can also mean that the fish has become farmed, and likely the quality of fish is not as good.
True, but it also means they’re no longer endangered at least as far as numbers of them, of course they can still be endangered in the wild.
To be honest, i think it is very unlikely that their populations in the wild will raise up enough. At least if they become common in the hobby they can live on and I can get one with little fears and money xD
Dougall, with all due respect, people wanting them shouldn't be an issue.
I'm tired of excuses. Demand, effort, cost, controlling availability to experienced hobbyists, etc. as justification to charge high prices. I say bull pucky to all. Do you think that the cichlid species I mentioned became common in the hobby overnight? It occurs as a spreading effect. If conservation is the goal, the more people who keep the fish the better. Those with access will be a few at first, then gradually spread to other capable breeders, and then expand to more, etc. until the species becomes easily obtainable for a reasonable price. Here is a real example. The only known captive population of Haplochromis sp. 'fine bar scraper', a victorian, was being housed and bred at the Denver Zoo. This species was believed to be extinct in the wild. Due to budget cuts, the zoo chose to get rid of these fish. The remaining individuals, I don't remember how many (it was less than a 100) were given to the officers of the Rocky Mountain Cichlid Association. I want to say this was about 2012. These were distributed to a few of the long-term members in good standing. Something like eight people. As they started to breed, they gave fry to another eight or ten people. A few months later, a few were offered for auction at the annual fall auction. Expanding the breeders to thirty or so. I got in on the next distribution, in March of the following year. I paid $25.00 for twelve fish in four separate auctions. The next October was the next distribution. By the time that next auction came around, only new members were bidding on them. Most of the folks breeding them were at anywhere from 15 to 40 fish, depending on how long they'd had them, and I was at a dozen and a half or so. We started distributing them throughout the country to establish multiple breeding groups across the country to ensure one catastrophic event did not spread across RMCA members' tanks and cause the species to go extinct. I sent some to Missouri, a few to Montana, and gave them away to some folks in Cheyenne, Casper and Gillette, Wyoming. I never asked for more than the cost of shipping. Most of the members charged a few dollars per fish, $30.00 being the highest price I heard charged. I gave some to a friend here in Cheyenne. He moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and got rid of a bunch, then moved to Missouri. He ended up becoming a member of the same aquarium association as the guy I had sent fish to. I quit the RMCA two years ago, as I started getting into CA cichlids, because the RMCA has a "signature" of being a rift valley club. But fish that were several generations from the first fish shipped out were being traded in and the improvement to breeding success was phenomenal with the new blood and genetic variation. Nowadays you don't see them in big box stores, but I've seen them on Dave's Rare Fish numerous times and I even saw them on The Wet Spot price list once. Only $15.00 each. The officers and senior members of the club could have made some serious money. Yeah. But they didn't. That is how you get a conservation program going. Granted, this wasn't the methodology that the RMCA came up with. It was based on recommendations from the ACA and the CARES conservation program. But it has pulled the species from the brink of extinction and made it available to folks who really want to keep and breed it.
If conservation is the goal, the more people who keep the fish the better. If a species is charismatic and more people actually desire it, then the better the odds that it will survive in captivity. If people have seen it and want it, all the better.
I don't just give my fish to anybody. I do help people who are interested and aren't experienced or equipped to take them to understand the needs of the fish and to gain the experience to own the fish, once they are equipped. Regardless, my goal has always been distribution and education. Anyone who is going to play the conservation card better have those goals in mind.
You know, if it's going to take 10,000 fish to ensure the survival of tzebra plecos in the wild, then in theory it is going to require the same number in captivity. In addition, there needs to be enough random circulation from one hobbyist to another to ensure genetic diversity. I would be very surprised if there are 10,000 individuals among the folks breeding zebra plecos now. We know that a fish can be saved with far fewer than 10k. Fish show amazing resilience to genetic bottlenecks, but in captivity there still needs to be an adequate population to allow for random distribution. This can occur by gradually separating a small population into discreet breeding groups, from which individuals can be exchanged for individuals from other groups. With small populations that have very little genetic flow, the risk of a compromised immune system and deleterious mutations is high. Honestly, I have to wonder how much of the difficulty in breeding and reduced fecundity is due to inbreeding, considering that the species has been managed by a relatively small group of breeders. A breeding population that has limited distribution of breeding animals between a few breeders is susceptible to being wiped out by a disease outbreak or a fatal mutation.
Anyways, using cost to limit distribution because they're high in demand and that is a method to ensure they only go to serious breeders is just another excuse in my opinion.
FishAddict74, some of the Victorian species may be reintroduced. Many won't. In spite of a massive reduction in the nile perch population in Lake Victoria after a huge population explosion in the 1980s and 1990s, there are still enough to make it likely that reintroduced fish that were extirpated to begin with will be eaten to extinction again. Some are being stocked in small lakes around Lake Victoria that have few native fish and no native cichlids. Others are being introduced in man-made reservoirs that have no cichlid species from the water source they are created from. Although not ideal, it does fill the need to return the fish into the wild and establish alternate populations so that a single, unforeseen pandemic in captivity does not result in a sudden extinction event.
WYite
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I looked up those fine bars, those are cool looking, almost a metallic navy blue if I found the right fish.
Wyite- my respect for you just dropped to a very low level. You have no clue for how much I sold my fish, how they were acquired and from what source nor for how much I sold them. You have no clue at all yet you have a very strong opinion about something you apparently have almost no knowledge about.
Here are the things which you have chosen to ignore. Let's say you bought 13 fish for $3,500. You took a risk that they might die, that they might not spawn etc. Now let's suppose you are successful and you bred the fish and have offspring to sell. Now the fish you bought are being sold by others who spawn them as well as those who got them illegally removed from Brazil. Moreover, for any number of reasons, these fish are not widely available and only live in one part of one river in the world.
Now these fish used to sell for about $150 retail (but niot from stores). But you want to be a hero so you offer them for $50 each. Do you have any clue what will happen. People will line up to buy them from you, the problem is those people will mostly be resellers. They will gladly pay you for your altruism and then turn around and sell those fish for $150. They will make you the fool of the day.
Next, you have no idea what I did with all my offspring nor the proceeds or even what I actually charged. You seem to have no idea about the facts surrounding these fish at all. I am not even sure I want to bother trying to educate you.
1. Prior to Brazil instituting the "approved lists" there were no regulations regarding the removal of wild fish. There are more fw in Brazil than we can know. So the solution was to create a list of those fish allowed to be exported. it is often called the Positive List. Had this been done the other way, i.e. a list of fish not allowed to be exported, then any fish not yet discovered and described would have been legal to export.
2. My original zebras were purchased as a proven breeding group in early 2006. The original owner had accumulated them over several years and grown them to spawning size. All of these fish came out of Brazil before they began having the approved lists.
3. I sold my fish for less than the going rate, I required buyers to take a minimum of 5 fish and a maximum of 8. Only folks wanting to breed them were the likely buyers and I also screened potential buyers to make sure they were able to keep and try to spawn them. I later upped the max. to 10 fish and if one bought ten, I added an extra fish to the box. Nobody else did this as far as I know.
4. I do not usually make a big deal about this because I do it for its value not for the credit. But take a look on Planetcatfish and see who the larger donors are to the site. Or check with the folks that host the bi-annual Catfish Convention and ask how much I spent on sponorships for the event. Check with the NEC for the same thing. You will find I have donated a lot of zebras for conservation causes. 100% of the proceeds are donated. You would also see that when the NEC recently offered to match donations by member clubs or their individual members to project Piaba up to a total of $1,000 in such donations. I sent them $250 so they got $500. How much did any of you reading this donate? I also sent $250 to a fish rescue operation last Dec.They rescue the big fish hobbyists who don't know any better get stuck with and have to give away of kill.
5. It is nice to opine about changing the conditions rather than removing the fish. But this clearly indicates you have no clue about how things work in Brazil. In order to dam the Xingu river the Brazilian authorities claimed there were very few species in the river. This simply was not the case. What there was not were a lot of identified species. So they used this argument to risk wiping them out. This does not compare to how they treated the native population that had lived along the rive for millenia. They were flooded out. The Brazilian authorities do not care about anything but the money the electricity from the damn provides. It is mostly for business not residential use. Change the conditions/ I guess you mean cancel the dam project? You need to wise up if you think that was a possibility.
6. Next, you need to get educated about zebra reproduction. Firstly, they take a few years to reach sexual maturity. Next, they have very small spawns, 15 eggs is a lot. It takes some time to get them a safe selling size. Finally, they only spawn when they want to, not when keepers try to trigger them. I was extremely lucky. People way more skilled than I have failed. All of this combined with their being found in only one section of one river makes the price what it was/is.
7. If one wants to buy zebras today they can easily find tank raised fish. How the heck do you think that is possible? The fish did not suddenly spring into existence in aquariums. The started out in the wild. So did all the fish any of us keep in our tanks.
8. If you had bothered to watch Leandro's vid I had posted you might have more of a clue about what you are saying regarding these fish. You might realize that the blame for most of the issues you mention lies directly with the Brazilian authorities. Academics and professional fish folks tried to organize captive breeding in Brazil which would have avoided all of the isses and problem. they tried to show the diversity of species there actually were in the Xingu. But the government was stubborn. It is only in the most recent past that there are such operation now in Brazil. I am not sure they have gone beyond the research stage to being allowed to export the offspring.
9. You would also know there are several major farming operations in Asia now producing zebras in large numbers. If you want to buy a cheap zebra all you have to do is spend about 45-50/fish and buy the minimum of 50 fish and you can resell them for whatever you want. We did this for less because we got 300+. We offered fish to folks registered for the NEC at $85/fish. Most shops do not spend well over $10k on a single species. You also might know that these days most zebras sold are tank/farm raised. Of course, if you import and then lose some, too bad it's your loss.
One more thing re the big farming operations. They claim they bought all their breeding stock before the fish were not illegal to remove from Brazil. I doubt this can be proved, so I take it with a grain of salt. In any case, they had to get many 100s of fish from the wild to set up an operation producing 1,000 fish/week when 15 or even 20 is the maximum number of fish per spawn and the males take about a month from egg laying to when they release free swimming fry. The math is simple 1,000/15 = 67 dads. This also means they needed at least 34 females for a total of 101 adults. Due to how the fish are caught they are not sexed at that time. males are easier to catch so collectors need a lot more than 101 fish to be safe. And this does not account for any losses or the fact that the fish do not spawn on demand. Farms need many 100s of zebras to have the kind of production they do.
10. If you had any clue instead of jumping on your high horse, you would have known much of the above. Of course you could not know how I sold anything or how I came by my fish. As far as I know most of mine were not illegally removed from Brazil. You would also know about CITES: " There is no way to prove any given fish was born in the wild or in a tank or on a farm after the fact.
CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species." CITES has something called the Appendix II List. Species listed in Appendix II cannot move between the signatory countries unless they are accompanied by a certificate of origin. This certifies the source of the animals and prevent illegal fish from being traded easily. And yes, to bring in those 300+ zebras we had such certification. This listing effectively put a damper on the illegal export of zebras from Brazil. year ago I could find several ways to buy illegal wild zebras had I wanted to do so, Today I would have to do a lot of work to find them, if I even could. But I can find all the zebras i might want tank raised. If I were willing to sell to some to you I could as mine have been spawning again. So, in a few months I will be selling zebras again.
Here is one last question to answer. It is too soon to know if many of the species unique to the Big Bend and below it will survive in the wild or not. According to Leandro and his colleagues, for zebras it is right on the edge. It is still very possible that the combination of the dam and the remaining illegal fish trade will cause the species numbers to reach the tipping point. So what do you think will have made more sense in the long run, not to remove any of the fish from the wild and have them end up extinct or to remove some, (best done in a controlled fashion) and to allow hobbyists and professional fish farmers to insure the species survived in aquariums across the globe?
So I have two words for Wyite and those who chimed in with him and they are definitely not Happy Birthday.
If you want to learn, have a read here https://e360.yale.edu/features/base...-can-hobbyists-save-rare-fish-from-extinction if you do you will read the below. I believe you kept Africans for some time?
Here are the things which you have chosen to ignore. Let's say you bought 13 fish for $3,500. You took a risk that they might die, that they might not spawn etc. Now let's suppose you are successful and you bred the fish and have offspring to sell. Now the fish you bought are being sold by others who spawn them as well as those who got them illegally removed from Brazil. Moreover, for any number of reasons, these fish are not widely available and only live in one part of one river in the world.
Now these fish used to sell for about $150 retail (but niot from stores). But you want to be a hero so you offer them for $50 each. Do you have any clue what will happen. People will line up to buy them from you, the problem is those people will mostly be resellers. They will gladly pay you for your altruism and then turn around and sell those fish for $150. They will make you the fool of the day.
Next, you have no idea what I did with all my offspring nor the proceeds or even what I actually charged. You seem to have no idea about the facts surrounding these fish at all. I am not even sure I want to bother trying to educate you.
1. Prior to Brazil instituting the "approved lists" there were no regulations regarding the removal of wild fish. There are more fw in Brazil than we can know. So the solution was to create a list of those fish allowed to be exported. it is often called the Positive List. Had this been done the other way, i.e. a list of fish not allowed to be exported, then any fish not yet discovered and described would have been legal to export.
2. My original zebras were purchased as a proven breeding group in early 2006. The original owner had accumulated them over several years and grown them to spawning size. All of these fish came out of Brazil before they began having the approved lists.
3. I sold my fish for less than the going rate, I required buyers to take a minimum of 5 fish and a maximum of 8. Only folks wanting to breed them were the likely buyers and I also screened potential buyers to make sure they were able to keep and try to spawn them. I later upped the max. to 10 fish and if one bought ten, I added an extra fish to the box. Nobody else did this as far as I know.
4. I do not usually make a big deal about this because I do it for its value not for the credit. But take a look on Planetcatfish and see who the larger donors are to the site. Or check with the folks that host the bi-annual Catfish Convention and ask how much I spent on sponorships for the event. Check with the NEC for the same thing. You will find I have donated a lot of zebras for conservation causes. 100% of the proceeds are donated. You would also see that when the NEC recently offered to match donations by member clubs or their individual members to project Piaba up to a total of $1,000 in such donations. I sent them $250 so they got $500. How much did any of you reading this donate? I also sent $250 to a fish rescue operation last Dec.They rescue the big fish hobbyists who don't know any better get stuck with and have to give away of kill.
5. It is nice to opine about changing the conditions rather than removing the fish. But this clearly indicates you have no clue about how things work in Brazil. In order to dam the Xingu river the Brazilian authorities claimed there were very few species in the river. This simply was not the case. What there was not were a lot of identified species. So they used this argument to risk wiping them out. This does not compare to how they treated the native population that had lived along the rive for millenia. They were flooded out. The Brazilian authorities do not care about anything but the money the electricity from the damn provides. It is mostly for business not residential use. Change the conditions/ I guess you mean cancel the dam project? You need to wise up if you think that was a possibility.
6. Next, you need to get educated about zebra reproduction. Firstly, they take a few years to reach sexual maturity. Next, they have very small spawns, 15 eggs is a lot. It takes some time to get them a safe selling size. Finally, they only spawn when they want to, not when keepers try to trigger them. I was extremely lucky. People way more skilled than I have failed. All of this combined with their being found in only one section of one river makes the price what it was/is.
7. If one wants to buy zebras today they can easily find tank raised fish. How the heck do you think that is possible? The fish did not suddenly spring into existence in aquariums. The started out in the wild. So did all the fish any of us keep in our tanks.
8. If you had bothered to watch Leandro's vid I had posted you might have more of a clue about what you are saying regarding these fish. You might realize that the blame for most of the issues you mention lies directly with the Brazilian authorities. Academics and professional fish folks tried to organize captive breeding in Brazil which would have avoided all of the isses and problem. they tried to show the diversity of species there actually were in the Xingu. But the government was stubborn. It is only in the most recent past that there are such operation now in Brazil. I am not sure they have gone beyond the research stage to being allowed to export the offspring.
9. You would also know there are several major farming operations in Asia now producing zebras in large numbers. If you want to buy a cheap zebra all you have to do is spend about 45-50/fish and buy the minimum of 50 fish and you can resell them for whatever you want. We did this for less because we got 300+. We offered fish to folks registered for the NEC at $85/fish. Most shops do not spend well over $10k on a single species. You also might know that these days most zebras sold are tank/farm raised. Of course, if you import and then lose some, too bad it's your loss.
One more thing re the big farming operations. They claim they bought all their breeding stock before the fish were not illegal to remove from Brazil. I doubt this can be proved, so I take it with a grain of salt. In any case, they had to get many 100s of fish from the wild to set up an operation producing 1,000 fish/week when 15 or even 20 is the maximum number of fish per spawn and the males take about a month from egg laying to when they release free swimming fry. The math is simple 1,000/15 = 67 dads. This also means they needed at least 34 females for a total of 101 adults. Due to how the fish are caught they are not sexed at that time. males are easier to catch so collectors need a lot more than 101 fish to be safe. And this does not account for any losses or the fact that the fish do not spawn on demand. Farms need many 100s of zebras to have the kind of production they do.
10. If you had any clue instead of jumping on your high horse, you would have known much of the above. Of course you could not know how I sold anything or how I came by my fish. As far as I know most of mine were not illegally removed from Brazil. You would also know about CITES: " There is no way to prove any given fish was born in the wild or in a tank or on a farm after the fact.
CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments. Its aim is to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten the survival of the species." CITES has something called the Appendix II List. Species listed in Appendix II cannot move between the signatory countries unless they are accompanied by a certificate of origin. This certifies the source of the animals and prevent illegal fish from being traded easily. And yes, to bring in those 300+ zebras we had such certification. This listing effectively put a damper on the illegal export of zebras from Brazil. year ago I could find several ways to buy illegal wild zebras had I wanted to do so, Today I would have to do a lot of work to find them, if I even could. But I can find all the zebras i might want tank raised. If I were willing to sell to some to you I could as mine have been spawning again. So, in a few months I will be selling zebras again.
Here is one last question to answer. It is too soon to know if many of the species unique to the Big Bend and below it will survive in the wild or not. According to Leandro and his colleagues, for zebras it is right on the edge. It is still very possible that the combination of the dam and the remaining illegal fish trade will cause the species numbers to reach the tipping point. So what do you think will have made more sense in the long run, not to remove any of the fish from the wild and have them end up extinct or to remove some, (best done in a controlled fashion) and to allow hobbyists and professional fish farmers to insure the species survived in aquariums across the globe?
So I have two words for Wyite and those who chimed in with him and they are definitely not Happy Birthday.
If you want to learn, have a read here https://e360.yale.edu/features/base...-can-hobbyists-save-rare-fish-from-extinction if you do you will read the below. I believe you kept Africans for some time?
You made some good points and I respect the donations and conservation efforts that you mentioned. It still sounds like a cycle that needs to be broken to save the species. The initial cost is high-then the time to spawn- the number offnspring is low- those off spring are sold at a high cost to another potential breeder- that breeder sells them at high cost- the new breeder does the same thing. Even getting the price down to $50 would do wonders for increasing the number of people keeping zebras. I understand that sellers would buy them up at $50 with dollar signs in their eyes but I imagine the cost would come down with more and more being sold. The only way to really save them is to make them more available to the average keeper, not just the hardcore hobbyists. There are lots of fish that were very expensive 20 years ago that are now $20-$30. I’m not trying to say it’s all on you or you’re doing something wrong. I’m just making the point about getting the cost down to realistic price for most keepers. The fact that sellers would buy them up and Jack up the price proves it.
