Creating Nature, the new AMAZONAS Magazine series by Steve Waldron, continues in the July/August 2017 issue with Part 2 – Implementation.

Subscribe to AMAZONAS – Never Miss an Issue

Don’t miss this ongoing series by Steve Waldron, Amazonas Senior Contributor and editor of Takashi Amano’s English biography, Origin of Creation.

A step-by-step implementation guide

Article & images by Steve Waldron • Now that we have committed ourselves to the Nature Aquarium path, studied the works of master aquascapers, invested in quality aquascaping supplies, and started learning how to grow aquatic plants and feed our creative spirit with natural inspiration, the time has arrived to set up an aquarium.

The author’s demonstration Nature Aquarium, created for this article, a week after planting. This aquascape is a 60 x 30 x 45-cm (approx. 24 x 12 x 18-inch) high-clarity rimless aquarium with pre-soaked driftwood and Aqua Soil that in a few short weeks will be filled with a riot of plant biodiversity and beauty. The plants used in this layout include Glossostigma elatinoides, Blyxa japonica, Syngonathus sp. “Giant,” Cyperus helferi, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Rotala sp. Green, Rotala sp. H’ra, Myriophyllum mattogrossense, Ludwigia x. lacustris, Potamogeton gayi, Mayaca fluviatilis, Bucephalandra spp., and Willow Moss.

The first stage in Nature Aquarium design is about context—where in the room will the aquascape dwell? We don’t want to place an aquarium too close to a window, where the variable natural sunlight could throw our carefully controlled lighting scheme out of balance, and we want to avoid areas with heavy foot traffic that could startle our fishes. The aquarium should be placed on a level stand that can hold the weight of the water, substrate, and hardscape. If you have a rimless aquarium, it should be placed on a dense foam mat to protect its fragile glass bottom and corners.

There is also the aesthetic significance of context—how will this Nature Aquarium beautify your home? A well-executed planted aquarium is a living art piece and should be the centerpiece of the room. Going slowly and spending time with an empty aquarium, reflecting on its potential impact in a room, is an important exercise. In my opinion, one of the true masters of context is Adam Paszczela, a virtuoso aquascaper from Poland. Adam has created a beautiful aquascaping studio with rustic beams, wood floors, natural light, and just a lot of elegant style that shows off his magnificent Nature Aquariums to their best advantage. I want to live in his studio! (See Online, below.)

Laying down the substrate

Once the aquarium has been set up in its final position, the first installation step is adding the substrate. If your goal is to grow a dense garden of aquarium plants with wall-to-wall coverage, then a nutrient-rich, soil-based substrate will make your job much easier. I prefer to use ADA’s Amazonia Aqua Soil, and have had great repeated success with it, though I am sure other alternatives are fine too. I tend not to use any soil additives, as I usually break down an aquascape after a year or so and like to start out with fresh, fertile soil.

An empty aquarium is a vessel with endless creative potential.

For the aquascape shown in this article’s photos, I used one 2.4-gallon (9-L) bag of soil for the 12 x 24-inch (30 x 60-cm) footprint. Generally, you will need at least 2 inches (5 cm) of soil for stem plants and other plants with robust root systems, and at least 0.75 inch (1.9 cm) for carpeting plants. You can shape your soil layer any way you like—the sky is the limit. Some aquascapers create steep, high-banked substrates with precipitous slopes and inclines; some prefer zones of thick plantings over soil, broken up by patches of bright cosmetic sand. For this demonstration I chose a classic, gentle slope of shallow soil in the front, angling up to a higher bank at the back; this offers a nice perspective of the aquascape when viewed from the front and provides a base for my carpet of low-growing Glossostigma. If you are new to aquascaping, I recommend keeping it simple, with one substrate type and a basic substrate layout, as you will likely change up your plant arrangements many times before arriving at your final destination.

Hardscape choices

One of the most common questions I field at my shop is: “Why are these sticks and rocks so expensive? Can I just find something out in the woods or on the beach and put it in my aquarium?” Not all natural materials are suited for aquarium use—resinous wood, like the conifers that are so prominent in the forests around my home, can release potent secondary compounds and natural chemicals that are toxic to aquarium life. Some stones release pH-altering minerals into the water. Anything found on a beach will release salts. In general, we want to choose hardscape material (i.e., stone and wood) that is inert and will not change our water chemistry. I like to soak my wood in a trash can that I have designated for this purpose to leach out tannins and keep the wood waterlogged and ready for use. The stone and wood sold in aquarium shops has proven to be suitable and safe for aquarium use. However, if you have the inclination, some knowledge of botany or geology, and an experimental mindset, there is no reason why you can’t find some natural materials for your aquascaping projects in your own neck of the woods. I have been wanting to try the root structures of local riparian trees, like willow or alder, and collect basalt, lava rock, and slate when out on hikes.

When it comes to choosing hardscape materials for their aesthetic value, you have two choices. You can select materials that have strong visual presence and character of their own—a fine piece of driftwood or stone can look like a natural sculpture, and you might want to highlight such a piece in your aquascape. The horn wood pieces I chose for this article’s demonstration aquascape have such a strong presence that it’s kind of hard not to make the layout interesting! Or you can choose humbler, less interesting rock and wood and test your ability to bring out the best in these simple materials, perhaps covering them in beautiful arrangements of ferns and mosses that obscure the weaker points of the hardscape.

Make sure to take your time figuring out your hardscape arrangement, because it will become the backbone of your aquascape, the prominent aesthetic structure that will define the plantings and the overall visual impact of your creation. The thoughtful and artistic arrangement of charismatic stone, wood, and plants is really what distinguishes a Nature Aquarium from the average planted aquarium.

Here are a couple of hardscape tips: I like to play around with stone and wood layouts in a “sandbox” dedicated to this purpose. I built a 48 x 18-inch (122 x 46-cm) wooden box filled with playground sand and use it to visualize a hardscape layout. It’s a lot of fun and I find it a meditative, relaxing process. Some aquascapers use a sandbox as a sort of daily exercise and ritual to perfect their style. I take lots of photos of a layout that appeals to me, and even mark or label the faces of stones and pieces of wood so I can recreate more complicated layouts in the actual aquarium. Sleep on a hardscape layout before you commit to it, and you might find yourself switching things up a few days later. Time and patience can only improve one’s results.

The author’s sandbox: a useful tool for pre-visualizing a hardscape layout before it is applied to an aquascape.

One thing to think about when creating a hardscape is the concept of “creating tension.” I think the most appealing hardscapes are those that look slightly impossible—like they are somehow defying gravity or on the verge of collapse. A flat hardscape is a boring hardscape. You don’t want to overdo it, but bringing some tension into your hardscape arrangement will really give it impact. I use small stones to shim up pieces of wood or stone, raising them up off the substrate to accentuate their strength, beauty, and grace.

The final version of the wood hardscape is installed over a soil substrate and shimmed into place with stones; the tank is nearly ready for planting.

My aquascaping process

For the layout in this article’s photos, I had a few general ideas in mind prior to beginning the aquascaping process. I had some beautiful, rather dramatic wood pieces that I wanted to use to emphasize the vertical orientation of the aquarium and its unique dimensions; I wanted my plant selection to include a lot of diverse colors, textures, and forms to reflect the blossoming trees and flowers I was seeing during my spring walks in Seattle’s parks and neighborhoods; I wanted to use some classic Nature Aquarium plants that I associate with Takashi Amano’s early layouts from the 1990s; and I wanted the whole thing to look as if the driftwood was being engulfed by lush plants, the dead wood being overtaken by the exuberance of life. As with most things, having focused intentions before starting a project will aid in its success and keep it from going off the rails.

Glossostigma elatinoides has been a signature foreground plant since the 1980s, when it was rare and highly sought-after. Popularized by Takashi Amano, it is now widely available from nursery stock and tissue culture propagation (as seen here).

After spending a few days considering my hardscape arrangement, removing and adding pieces of wood and shimming them in place with stones to bring in a little tension, I set about planting. Aquascapes are often broken down into foreground, middle ground, and background when considering planting schemes. This is an effective and methodical approach to designing a layout. For my foreground carpeting plant, I chose Glossostigma elatinoides, a staple of Nature Aquariums since Amano first started using the plant in the late 1980s.

A plastic tray filled with carefully layered, cleaned, and prepared aquarium plants is the aquascaping equivalent of the painter’s palette.

The middle layer would consist of Blyxa japonica, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Bucephalandra spp., and Syngonanthus sp. “Giant,” a plant that is new to me and that I wanted to experiment with. For the background I decided on a screen of Potamogeton gayi, Mayaca fluviatilis, Ludwigia x lacustris, Myriophyllum mattogrossense, Rotala sp. “Green,” and Rotala sp. “H’ra.” These plants were selected for their complementary and contrasting leaf structures and colors. The sedge Cyperus helferi would provide bold vertical brushstrokes of bright green throughout the aquarium and pay homage to Amano’s early Nature Aquariums. The Glossostigma would come from tissue culture, my preferred source of plant material these days—tissue culture plants are algae- and pest-free and will grow uniformly from tiny starts, giving the aquascape a more cohesive look. However, most of the plants in this aquascape were grown out in farm tanks, so they were already adapted to my water conditions and ready to thrive once planted.

This bunch of Bucephalandra was considered prior to committing it to the aquascape. In the end, it was omitted, as it overwhelmed the sense of scale provided by the other fine and delicate plant selections.

The mechanics of placing the plant material are fairly straightforward. I drain down the aquarium to the point where the water barely covers the substrate. Planting in a loose, wet substrate makes for easy gardening and limits damage to the plant cuttings, and it doesn’t make a mess (as it would if the aquarium were full of water). I tend to start the planting process with the foreground plants. I prepared the tissue culture Glossostigma in advance by removing it from the cup, rinsing gel from the roots of the plant mass, and breaking the nodes up into small chunks. A good pair of planting forceps is essential in making this process as smooth as possible. I like to grab the plant with the forceps, enter the soil level at sort of an oblique angle, pull up on the plant a bit to allow the soil to fill in around the entry point, and then release it. It might take some practice to perfect your own technique.

Glossostigma broken up into small pieces in preparation for planting. A good pair of planting forceps makes installation of the propagules much easier and faster.

I spread the foreground starts out in an even distribution pattern. For this layout, I also mounted little bits of Bucephalandra and epiphytic moss, attaching them with the aid of the gel form of cyanoacrylate glue. After the epiphytes were mounted, I finished off the aquascape with the background stem plants and Cyperus. I like to keep a spray bottle filled with water on hand during the planting process, misting the delicate aquatic plants from time to time to keep them hydrated until the aquarium is filled.

Planting a background screen of stem plants is made easier with a thick substrate layer of wet, loose soil. Do this before the tank is filled.

“Epiphytic” plants like aquatic ferns, Anubias, and mosses can be easily mounted to stone or wood hardscape material with the gel form of cyanoacrylate glue.

Lighting considerations

Once the plants were installed, I gently filled the aquarium with water, using the shower setting on my garden hose nozzle to avoid disturbing the aquascape. I then installed the light.

Gently filling the aquarium using the shower setting on a garden hose nozzle disperses the energy of the incoming water, keeping the hardscape from shifting and the substrate line intact.

For this aquarium I chose a Twinstar 600ES, a rather elegant LED unit with a beautiful color rendition. I hoped the Twinstar would pop the colors of the bright Ludwigia and Rotala in the background hedge, and the unit itself just looks very sleek. When choosing lights for a planted aquarium, we want something in the 6000 to 8000 Kelvin range for a color temperature that is pleasing to the eye. Aim for an intensity of at least 50 PAR units at the substrate if your intention is to grow a carpet of foreground plants. If you are serious about aquascaping, a PAR meter is an essential tool that will take the guesswork out of a lot of your planting decisions. In general, we consider 10-20 PAR to be low light, 20-50 PAR to be medium light, and 50 PAR and above to be high light. With the Twinstar 600ES installed on my 18″ tall aquarium, I was getting 75 PAR at the substrate, which I know from past experience should be more than adequate for growing a dense carpet of Glossostigma in the presence of injected CO₂. Injected CO₂ allows the plants to grow more efficiently, even under moderate light intensity. The light unit was hooked up to a light timer set for an “on” period of eight hours.

Immediately after planting, the aquarium is gently filled with lukewarm water. A haze from fine substrate particles fills the water column. Canister filtration and daily 50 percent water changes for the first week are essential for regaining water clarity and keeping algae blooms at bay.

In the next episode of “Creating Nature” I will cover carbon dioxide injection, filtration, fertilization, maintenance, trimming plants, cycling the aquarium, and animal selection. Let’s hope the water in my tank clears and the plants in my Nature Aquarium begin to root, grow, and come to life!

Steve Waldron is an AMAZONAS senior contributor and the co-founder of the retail aquascaping shop, Aquarium Zen in Seattle, Washington. He is the editor of the English-language edition of Origin of Creation, the official Takashi Amano biography (Aqua Design Amano, 2016).

Subscribe to AMAZONAS – Never Miss an Issue

Don’t miss Steve Waldron’s writing in AMAZONAS—get your own personal subscription, published in handsome, lifetime-reference print and digital editions—free delivery to your home or office.

ONLINE
ADA Poland—check out Adam Paszczela’s work on Facebook and at
http://www.aquadam.com.pl

Waldron, S. Creating Nature: Part I—Inspiration. AMAZONAS 6 (3): 44–50,
http://www.reef2rainforest.com/2017/04/20/creating-nature-part-1-%E2%80%A2-inspiration

A tank-busting issue arriving now: cover of AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 6, Number 5, PEACOCK BASS. On the cover: Several species of Cichla spp. basses, by Enrico Richter.

The September/October 2017 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and now on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale August 8th, 2017.

Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION
Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, A sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

The Table of Contents: a road map to diverse content, features, and expert contributors to be found in this issue. Read the TOC online here.

“When I told a friend I was thinking of doing an issue on peacock bass of the genus Cichla, he gave me a scathing look…in North America and Europe, however, aquariums holding hundreds of gallons are no longer unusual, and many ‘swimming pool’ aquarists keep one or more Cichla species in their tanks.” —Hans-Georg Evers, introducing the latest issue.

A remembrance of the life of Hans Albrecht Baensch by his protegee H-G Evers and old friend James Lawrence, publisher of the English-language AMAZONAS. Next is an update on the fascinating gobies in the genus Rhinogobius to lead off Aquatic Notebook.

Lead Cover Story: Thomas Weidner introduces The Genus Cichla: Big fishes for big spaces.

Enrico Richter presents: The Peacock Bass—a species primer, including many species only recently described, and some that can reach sizes of over 3 feet (1 m) in length.

Enrico Richter shares a challenge: Not for the faint-hearted: keeping and breeding peacock bass. Read it and dream.

In the AMAZONAS continuing planted aquarium and aquascaping series Creating Nature, Senior Contributor Steve Waldron discusses the application of CO2 and the “golden moment” in setting up a simplified new “Nature Aquarium.”

We’ve all misplaced valuable things, but imagine science losing an entire species of catfish and all track of the river they come from. Toronto-based ichthyologist Dr. Nathan Lujan unravels a biological mystery tale in Rediscovering a Lost Loricariid—and discovers a couple of new species in the process.

Although first described in 1989, Betta strohi has been extremely difficult to find, but this attractive species could soon become available to fans of wild-type Bettas, says a fan of the species, Hansjürgen Dieke.

Until now, the idea of breeding the big, magnificent Pseudacanthicus sp. “Titanic” fell into the category of “only in your dreams”—but this particular fantasy has now come true. Discover how in “A Breeding Milestone: Pseudacanthicus sp. L273 ‘Titanic,’” by Wai Meng Lui.

Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand introduces the four species of exotic aquatic plants that grow in primal rainforests comprising the genus Barclaya, sometimes called aquatic Orchid Lilies.

“Sometimes you must wait years to acquire your dream fish. Search after search can lead to dead ends. But when you finally get your fish and they start breeding, the wait seems worth it,” says author Dirk Stojek, introducing his experiences with the rare Colombian livebearer Priapichthys nigroventralis.

Until recently, Corydoras sp. CW16 was stubbornly difficult to breed, even for experts. But new knowledge of the conditions in which they live in the wild helped solve the puzzle, says AMAZONAS Editor Hans-Georg Evers of his quest for the secrets held by this handsome species.

Visit breeder John Skidmore of Golden Pond Tropicals in Wimauma, Florida, whose facility is the only one in the US—and possibly the world—to commercially produce the Upside Down Catfish. Biologist Eric Cassiano, in the first of a series on Florida fish farming, shares the ups and downs of breeding the Upside Down Catfish.

The Big Events: What’s happening and where in the aquarium world. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email to make sure it gets posted online and in print.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies—and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s Species Snapshots provide an insightful glimpse into what’s new and hot in the aquarium trade—fishes, shrimps, and even a stunning new crayfish. In this issue: Orthochromis stormsi, Enteromius ablabes (Ablabe’s Barb), Cherax sp. “Orange Tiger Apocalypse,” Lamprologus markerti, Phenacogrammus sp. “Orange Makoua,” and Caridina sp. “Raccoon Tiger.”

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

Gary Bagnall, Zoo Med Laboratories founder, in a company greenhouse in San Luis Obispo, California.

Zoo Med at 40

Article & Images by Gary Bagnall

Introduction by Michael J. Tuccinardi
Excerpt from AMAZONAS, November/December 2017

Anyone who has taken part in an aquarium society event in the United States is probably familiar with Zoo Med Laboratories—they donate a wide array of aquatic products to support clubs across the country. But few in the hobby realize that the founder and president of Zoo Med, a leading manufacturer of products for reptiles and amphibians, is himself a lifelong aquarium hobbyist. Gary Bagnall, in addition to being an unabashed and enthusiastic fish geek, has a personal interest in keeping the aquarium hobby thriving and ensuring that national and regional aquarium clubs and societies can continue their work. He has devoted a significant amount of his own money and resources to this cause, and he maintains an impressive collection of rare fishes among the more prominently featured turtles, lizards, and frogs at Zoo Med’s headquarters in San Luis Obispo, California.

Zoo Med is currently celebrating its 40th year in business, and we had the distinct honor of having Gary Bagnall—an unsung hero of the aquarium hobby—share an inside look at the history of the company and some of his personal aspirations for the future.
—M.J.T.

The company founder in the early years with a Shingleback Skink.

A Peek behind the Curtain:
My first decades with Zoo Med Labs
Forty years is a long time for any business to survive—especially a privately held family operation—but this is not where my story begins. I came from a family of four boys. Unfortunately, as a child my younger brother had a number of medical issues, so I was mostly left to my own devices and imagination. Like many budding aquarists, I spent hours down at the local creek in Sacramento, California, exploring the native fishes and lizards and trying to figure out how to bring most of them home. Although I shared a room with my little brother, who was something of a neat freak, I continued to fill my half of the room with an ever-growing assortment of aquariums, terrariums, and fishbowls.

When I was 11 years old I got my first job, at a pet shop (Russo’s Wonderful World of Pets in Newport Beach, California), earning the impressive starting salary of 50 cents per hour. I loved every minute of it, and by the age of 13 my focus had narrowed to tropical fishes. Yes, I was bitten by the tropical fish bug (we called it hobby pox), and I drowned myself in fish literature and caught rides with my friends to all the local aquarium shops. During this time, the owners of Russo’s asked me to start an aquarium society, so the Newport Fashion Island Aquarium Society, which included world-renowned killifish expert Royal Ingersoll, was born.

I spent many hours collecting local native fishes (both freshwater and marine) and selling them to local aquarium shops. Some of the fishes I found back then were the Desert Pupfish (Cyprinodon macularius) and Sailfin Mollies (Poecilia latipinna) that lived in the Cleveland Canal near the Salton Sea. The mollies became established there when a fish wholesaler who was in business in the 1940s tried to see if raising tropical fishes in the desert was viable (apparently it wasn’t, as he went out of business). Our most famous customer at Russo’s was the actor John Wayne, and I helped him many times when he came in to look at dogs.

A pet-store education: selling puppies and helping John Wayne: Gary at 13 with his Old English Sheepdog “Zig-Zag.” This was a 1969 ad for Russo’s Wonderful World of Pets- the first pet shop I worked at, starting at age 11.

As it happened, I went to one of the two schools in the United States that taught offset printing at a high school level, so we actually printed our aquarium club newsletter on my high school’s ATF Offset Chief 15 printing press—with photographs, which was unheard of at the time. The owner of a new local aquarium store wanted to run ads in our aquarium newsletter and asked me to come visit; when I arrived, he showed me a price list of African Cichlids (all Latin names, of course) and asked if I knew what these fishes were. I said yes, and he offered me a job. I replied, “Only if I can be the manager,” because I was tired of Russo’s treating me like a child. Thus began my final aquarium job leading up to the start of Zoo Med. The store was called Southwest Pet Center; it eventually started selling purebred dogs and birds. On a good weekend we sold over 40 dogs! Curt Lorenz was one of the smartest business owners I had ever met, and he taught me the power of advertising. He always wanted to be the first to offer an unusual pet. We had a miniature horse, a pot-bellied pig, an ostrich, and many other animals that were seldom seen in pet shops. I actually took the miniature horse for a walk one day and decided I was hungry, so the horse and I walked into a McDonalds and I ordered lunch. The crew at the counter didn’t know what to say, but I got my lunch without any problems.

Adventures in the import/export trade
When I was 19, a friend of mine who worked with a tropical fish wholesaler in Los Angeles was quitting to open a store in San Diego. I applied for his job and got it. Now I was selling tropical fishes in both Orange County (where I lived) and San Diego County. I refused to allow the crew at the wholesaler pack fishes for my customers, so I drove to Los Angeles each night to do it myself and was back on the road the next day selling more fishes. I was only getting about three hours of sleep per night, and one night I was so tired I dropped a bucket of 200 Neon Tetras from the top of a ladder. I quickly retrieved them, but this made me think, “This job is going to kill me!” So on my fish route I started selling live reptiles, which all my customers had been asking for, and I was so successful that in 1977 I quit the fish-selling job and started a live import/export reptile company, which later became Zoo Med Labs, Inc.

Photo taken in 1979 in front of the first warehouse California Zoological Supply rented—before this we were in garages. Left to right: Gary, Lloyd Lemke (accomplished Elaphe snake breeder), Ed Kammer (Parson Chameleon breeder), and Mandy.

The first name of my company was In Cold Blood (after the 1966 Truman Capote best-selling book of the same name) because reptiles are ectotherms (cold-blooded). When I picked up my shipments of live reptiles from the freight terminals in Los Angeles, the workers at the receiving desk did not share my humor (“I’m here to pick up reptiles for In Cold Blood…”), so I changed the name to Orange County Zoological Supply and eventually to California Zoological Supply. I spent my twenties traveling all over the world, procuring reptiles for Cal Zoo.

I traveled to Honduras, Mexico, Suriname, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Western Samoa, and Egypt. The king of Western Samoa signed our paperwork to export Pacific Island Boas and Coconut Crabs, and I was the first person to import Egyptian Uromastyx lizards and Egyptian Tortoises from Egypt. Cal Zoo also brought in the first four albino Boa Constrictors from Colombia, from which all albino and albino morphs in the pet trade are descended. I loved traveling and immersing myself in the live reptile business, but one day something odd happened.

This ad to
promote our terrarium
cage disinfectants
featured a surfing
iguana.

From livestock to dry goods
One of Cal Zoo’s good customers was a man named Mike Verner, who would put P.T. Barnum to shame. Mike was a genius at self-promotion and ran an aquarium and reptile shop that was second to none. His shop was one of the first to offer fully set-up vivariums with arrow frogs in them, and he sold setups that looked like something straight out of the Amazon rainforest. One day Mike walked into Zoo Med, placed a bottle of his ReptiVite reptile vitamins on my desk, and asked if I wanted to sell them. I laughed and said, “Who’s going to buy reptile vitamins?” I’ve never forgotten his reply: “Gary, vitamins don’t die, they don’t defecate, and they let you go home on weekends.” Now, anyone in the live animal business knows that the hours are very long—as in 12+ hours per day, 7 days a week. Live animals do not know when it’s a weekend or a holiday; they must be cleaned, watered, and fed every single day.

I agreed to try to sell the vitamins, and that is how Zoo Med started. Pet shops quickly embraced this product, and soon they were asking for more reptile products. It didn’t take long for me to buy out Mike’s business (excellent bird and reptile vitamins), and I quickly added reptile posters, driftwood, the Log Cabin Terrarium and Aquarium (a hollowed-out tree trunk with a window added to make a small terrarium or fishbowl), and a line of foods we made in-house. We developed the Reptile Rock Heater, which mimicked a place where a lizard or snake would come to heat up its intestines in order to digest its dinner. We made this product ourselves, from winding the coil-heating element to mixing the cement. We even made special ovens to cook moisture out of the stones and accelerate the drying.

A keystone product in the building of Zoo Med: revolutionary UVB-emitting bulbs for reptiles

1993 was a big year for Zoo Med—we developed the very first UVB reptile lamp in the world. I got the idea from a former Cal Zoo employee, Jil Whitcomb, who was raising juvenile green iguanas at the time. Some people just have a gift with animals, and Jil was one of them. She kept her iguanas in an open wire cage for airflow, provided arboreal structures so they could climb, fed them the correct diet, and provided a range of temperature zones, including a hot basking site. She even kept the cage next to a glass sliding door to capture indirect sunlight.

Everything seemed perfect, but at the age of eight months all the iguanas starting losing muscle mass in their hind legs and perished a month or so later from metabolic bone disease. Iguanas are major sun-basking lizards in the wild, and I had a hunch that regular glass was filtering out the benefits of sunlight. My research confirmed this, and I also discovered that what these animals were missing in captivity was the ultraviolet B (UVB) component in sunlight. If you looked all over the world for a UVB lamp in 1993, you would find it in only one place—the United States. The lamp was designed for the indoor suntanning industry; now I had to figure out how I could apply this type of lamp to reptiles. After researching UVB safety and the way reptiles process UVB/Vitamin D3 in their bloodstreams, we produced our first reptile UVB lamp, the ReptiSun UVB 310.

Milestone Inventions
When the lamp went to market in 1993, nobody understood why they needed it and why it cost more than conventional lights, so we had very poor sales the first year, despite an extensive education program. Our competition quickly produced knockoffs, but because they had little or no understanding of the physics of our lamp, they simply stuck reptile UVB lamp stickers on their aquarium lamps. For the next trade show we designed a light box into which we put every company’s reptile UVB lamp. Using a UVB meter, we showed customers at our booth that our lamp was the only one that put out any significant amount of UVB.

Other milestones for Zoo Med in the 1990s were our new line of reptile foods in retorted cans, ReptiBark substrate, basking heat lamps, natural grass iguana foods, a natural mite remedy, ReptiSafe water conditioner, and the first canned insects for the reptile industry (Can Os). In 2000, my fish hobbyist gene could not stand it any longer, and we added a full line of aquarium lamps. We came out with floating Turtle Docks in 2003 and made sure we had a patent, as this turned out to be a great product for Zoo Med and even won product of the year from one of our largest customers. Some of the other products in this decade were an automatic misting machine (ReptiRain), an automatic live bug catcher (BugNapper), Vita-Sand (substrate), and floating turtle and aquarium logs.

Company headquarters in 2017.

At one point Zoo Med had 16 warehouses in San Luis Obispo County, partly because we grew and partly because our small town did not have any buildings large enough to house our business. We finally moved into the 140,000-square-foot warehouse we have today, and another 60,000-square-foot building offsite.

Gary and his nephew Shane Bagnall in front of the Reptile House at the Cincinnati Zoo during one of the many Zoo conferences we attend.

Pet Nirvana
Being a hobbyist myself, I like to surround myself with like-minded serious enthusiasts and animals. Zoo Med’s customer service people are unique in that they are all hobbyists and use phone headsets while taking customer service calls so they can simultaneously maintain our company collection of rare turtles, tortoises, tropical fishes, and amphibians. In fact, in 2009 we built a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse we call Turtle Nirvana that is home to all our breeding stock of aquatic turtles and tortoises. This state-of-the-art greenhouse is heated by geothermal energy and has temperature-controlled UVB-transmitting glass panels on the roof. We have another 1,200 square feet of grow-out tanks for hatchling turtles, our tropical fish collection (we breed some cichlids), and our amphibians. We also have a special room where we incubate all our eggs in Zoo Meds Reptibators. We currently house over 500 turtles, 80 tortoises, 125 lizards, and 25 amphibians. Since 2009 we have successfully hatched over 1,500 animals from 47 species, many of them endangered.

Zoo Med staff, fall 2017, in San Luis Obispo.

Zoo Med might not have made it to 40, and would not be the company it is today, without a number of key people. They say you can count your closest friends on one hand, and Zoo Med’s COO, Steve Dalrymple, is one of mine. We met when we were 15 years old and have remained friends and business colleagues ever since. Steve has worked at Zoo Med for 25 years and is part of the R&D team.

Another crucial member of the team is Ken Fontes. When I met him in 2003, I was so impressed with his character and business acumen that I hired him on the spot. Ken became our CFO, controller, and director of human resources, and he significantly improved the quality of our workforce. My nephew, Shane Bagnall, one of the leading UVB researchers in the world, worked as a biological engineer at the prestigious Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, before coming to Zoo Med over 15 years ago.

Last but not least is Rita Zarate, whose immigrant parents worked hard to put all four of their children through college; Rita came to Zoo Med with a master’s degree in international business. She is part of the new guard who will take Zoo Med into the future long after I am gone.

My Albino African Lungfish (Protopterus a. aethiopicus). I have always loved “prehistoric”-type fishes.

So what now? I could not be more proud of this company, which started 40 years ago in a one-car garage with a $300 investment. My dream for the next decade is to construct a Reptile Zoo and a pet and aquarium museum that tells the history of petkeeping from the mid-1800s to today. In the meantime I still help develop new products for Zoo Med, travel to aquarium and reptile shows, and eat a Paleo diet, as I may need to live to 100 to finish all the work (and fun) I have to do!

Part II: Vintage Aquariums
Coming in the January/February Issue of AMAZONAS

Gary Bagnall with one of his extensive collections of vintage and historic aquariums, to be featured in the next issue of AMAZONAS.

A gorgeous issue arriving now: the cover of AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 6, Number 6, BLUE-EYES. On the cover: Pseudomugil conniae and P. luminatus by Hans-Georg Evers.

The November/December 2017 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and now on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale October 10th, 2017.

Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION
Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, A sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

The Table of Contents: a roadmap to diverse content, features, and expert contributors to be found in this issue. Read the TOC online here.

“[Blue-Eye Rainbowfishes] have real addiction potential. Lovers of small fishes who have not yet had the pleasure of keeping blue-eyes will surely be nudged toward setting up a small aquarium and acquiring some of them.” – Hans-Georg Evers, introducing the new issue.

“Zoo Med is currently celebrating its 40th year in business, and we had the distinct honor of having Gary Bagnall—an unsung hero of the aquarium hobby—share an inside look at the history of the company and some of his personal aspirations for the future.” —Michael J. Tuccinardi. Read this article online in a special excerpt from this issue.

Hans Ruhrmann muses, “I once thought of the small invaders in my ‘Microfex’ (Dero Worm, Dero digitata) cultures as unwelcome competitors for the worms, but once I recognized their value as live foods for small fishes, I looked for ways to culture them deliberately.”

Hans-Georg Evers remembers prominent ichthyologist Dr. Stanley H. Weitzman, who passed on February 16, 2017. “Stan was an extraordinary man. In spite of his fame he was modest, first and foremost a scientist and a friend of nature, and from early childhood he loved freshwater fishes. He was always ready to help other aquarists.”

For many decades, only a few blue-eye species were known in the aquarium world; now, new blue-eyes are being discovered and described with regularity. With justification, some are calling these glorious little natives of Australia and New Guinea “the butterflies of the aquarium.” Learn more in our feature coverage, starting with “Discovering the Blue-Eyes” by Hans Herbert Boeck.

Blue-eye husbandry and culture is hardly witchcraft. Anyone with the simplest means and a little expertise should be able to raise these splendid, likable little fishes, even in large numbers. Hans Herbert Boeck tells all.

Journey to Australia with author Ronny Lundkvist to discover Rainbowfishes & Blue-Eyes Down Under: Exclusively in our newest issue.

Marimo Balls: Like multitudes of autotrophic Tribbles infesting the main bridge of the USS Enterprise, suddenly they are everywhere. Learn more in the latest contribution from Devin Biggs.

“When AMAZONAS Magazine asked me to design an aquarium for a feature on Marimo Balls, I have to say I was apprehensive; I rarely think of them as suitable for the high art of a fine aquascape. After some consideration, I realized I’ve been wrong all along.” See Steve Waldron’s inspired creation in the latest issue.

Michael Pilack investigates the question, “Is Vieja melanura actually a single species, or are two species hiding within it?” Learn what he uncovers in the latest issue of AMAZONAS.

Enthusiasts of North American native fishes get a double helping of Shiner appreciation with Frank Strozyk’s article “Of Red and Rainbow Shiners.” Experience these worthy aquarium residents in the pages of our new issue.

Hans-Georg Evers journeys to Timika, West Papua, Indonesia, and returns with a report describing the biotopes for many different Blue-Eye Rainbowfishes—essential facts for enthusiasts who want to set up truly appropriate aquariums for these beauties. Get all the details in the new issue of AMAZONAS.

Who wouldn’t love jumping into an oversized aquarium and seeing his or her favorite fishes in their element? You can actually do this in Bonito, Brazil. Dive the Pantanal with Volker Vierecke and Frank Rossow in the new issue of AMAZONAS.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies—and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s must-read Species Snapshots reveals the newest and most interesting freshwater fish coming into the aquarium trade. In this issue: Apocalypse Red Claw Crayfish (Cherax sp.), Bamboo Filter-Feeding Shrimp (Australatya obscura), a rare Green Morph of the Gold Nugget Pleco (Baryancistrus xanthellus “Verde”), Tweddle’s Hap (Haplochromis tweddlei), the American Black Mottled Crayfish (Procambarus enoplosternum), and Everett’s Giant Danio (Nematabramis everetti).

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

An invigorating start to 2018 and our 7th year, AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1, PALUDARIUM PRIMER. On the cover: In the background, the Paludarium of Sam Rutka, and two male Apistogramma macmasteri “Vieja Redneck” by Hans-Georg Evers.

The January/February 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and now on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale December 5th, 2017.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

“One might think that enthusiasm eventually fades, and everything that once seemed exciting and fascinating becomes ho-hum. But I still meet people who know what real enthusiasm means.” As he introduces the issue, Hans-Georg Evers delves deeper into the passion that fuels us all.

Sulawesi’s five Malili Lakes, best known for extraordinarily attractive dwarf shrimps, were originally nutrient-poor and crystal-clear. Though they are home to many endemic species, multifarious man-made threats happening now may forever alter these special habitats.

For the second year running, the “World of the Aquarium Hobby” fascinated visitors at the Tierwelt-Messe (Animal-World Exhibition) in Magdeburg, Germany. See the winning aquascapes from “The Art of the Planted Aquarium” in the new issue.

First-time contributor Sam Rutka brings us our cover story: Behold…The Paludarium: When an aquarium and a terrarium fall in love.

Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand introduces several lesser-known new and easy-to-cultivate aquarium plant varieties.

RHEOPHYTES: Anubias & other worthy aquatic plants of the tropical rainforests, by Hans-Georg Evers, looks at Anubias, Bucephalandra, and the relatively unknown Schismatoglottis for resilient aquarium plants found along the water’s edge.

“I almost always have some A. macmasteri, or one of the very closely related species from the large Macmasteri Complex, swimming around in my tanks.” New contributor Jeff Michels provides an overview of this popular species cluster.

Hans-George Evers and F. Wang introduce several small tetras imported for the first time from the Tapajós basin. Commercial success has motivated Brazilian collectors to penetrate deep into the remotest areas of the Teles Pires and Juruena streams to find other interesting species.

Torsten Laicher asks, “Who says an aquarium is just for fishes and shrimps?” Aquatic amphibians are good candidates too, and are fascinating to watch. This is especially true of caecilians, aka “rubber eels.”

Did you think you knew everything there was to know about Kuhli Loaches? Well, Jens Kühne just struck Gold!

Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand provides the tools you need to once and for all settle the differences between Cryptocoryne pontederiifolia and Cryptocoryne moehlmannii.

Aquatic Interview: Rare aquarium plants are Stephan Karlick’s passion. We had a chance to visit him at home.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies—and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s must-read Species Snapshots keep you in the loop on what’s new, exciting, or flying below the radar in the freshwater aquarium trade. In this issue: Cryptocoryne nurii var. raubensis, Melanotaenia affinis “Sungai Dansari,” Cherax sp. “Blug Kong” Crayfish, the Mountain Swordtail (Xiphophorus nezahualcoyotl), Corydoras sp. CW 112, and an unknown tetra, possibly a Heterocharax sp., from the Rio Nanay.

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 1, AQUARIUM DISCOVERY, highlights the interconnected world of science and the aquarium keeping hobby. On the cover: Wild-Caught Discus from Peter Glunz, with a background of Rotala wallichii, photographed by Michael J. Tuccinardi.

The March/April 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale February 6th, 2018.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

“Aquarists have, since at least the mid-1850s, “researched” living fishes in their aquariums and discovered amazing things about their biology. The treasury of knowledge thus accumulated over the past 150-plus years is huge….This magazine is itself a reflection of such endeavors, as over the years AMAZONAS has published an enormous number of observations that would have been difficult or impossible for scientists to make on dead, preserved specimens.” – AMAZONAS Editor-in-Chief Hans-Georg Evers, noting the contributions that home aquarists have made to science

In this issue’s AQUATIC NOTEBOOK: Investigating the origins of the Red Lizard Whiptail Catfish, saving a native killifish, a homemade snail & shrimp trap, attending England’s Coryvention, and new Rhinogobius species.

The connection between the aquarium hobby and science is almost as old as aquariums themselves. History is revealed in Aquarium Discovery by Hans-Georg Evers.

Hans-Georg Evers talks with Brazilian catfish scientist Luiz F. C. Tencatt, who professes that, “Working with aquarists changed my life!”

CITIZEN SCIENCE (Aquarium Division): Aquarium keepers without university degrees in ichthyology or marine biology seldom get credit for the observations they make, but the annals of home fishkeepers are actually full of examples of important discoveries made by amateurs.

“I’m learning a lot at aquarium-hobby events!” Meet tropical freshwater fish researcher Melanie L. J. Stiassny, Ph.D.

Gary Bagnall confesses his love affair with antique tanks and prehistoric fishes in “Vintage Aquariums.”

Journey to Central American with Paul V. Loiselle, Ph.D., to rediscover the compact cichlids from the genera Archocentrus, Herotilapia, Panamius, and Rocio.

In “Untamed Discus,” Peter Glunz encourages you to reexamine the presumed difficulty of keeping and breeding wild discus.

Acquiring broodstock of Panaqolus albivermis L204, the Flash Pleco, was not easy, and neither was breeding—until our Dutch author, Jacqueline Heijmen Bennett-Leaver, finally abandoned natural male brood care and took matters into her own hands.

Michael J. Tuccinardi reveals one of Florida’s secrets: Few would suspect that just a short distance from the chaotic interchange of I-75 and 595—near the vast Sawgrass Mills outlet mall, where shoppers can find Gucci, Ralph Lauren, and Prada brands—lies the largest collection of aquarium plants in North America.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s must-read Species Snapshots reveal what’s new, exciting, or flying below the radar in the freshwater aquarium trade. In this issue: a South American Micro-Darter (Microcharacidium eliotroides), an unidentified Spiny Eel from Malawai (Mastacembelus sp. “Rosette”), Gulf Gambusia (Gambusia vittata), Marbled Knifefish (Adontosternarchus clarkae), Da Nang Giant Danio, (Laubuka sp. “Danag”), and Siamese Giant Danio (Laubuka siamensis).

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

Pterygoplichthys gibbiceps, known as the Sailfin or Leopard Pleco, part of a genus spreading in tropical waters around the globe. Image: ET1972/Shutterstock

Preview of article from AMAZONAS, May/June 2018
Notebook Staff Report

Florida fishermen and naturalists have known for years that many local waters are infested with invasive “plecos,” which are blamed for competing with native species, eroding shorelines with their burrowing behaviors, and even harassing endangered manatees by swarming over their moss-covered backs.

Now a new study attempts to document and map the global spread of Pterogoplichthys armored catfishes in places from many points in the United States to the Caribbean, the Middle East, and huge swathes of Asia, including India, China and many islands in Southeast Asia.

The eye-opening report, by Alexander Orfinger and Daniel Goodding in the Biology Department of the University of Central Florida, Orlando, entitled The Global Invasion of the Suckermouth Armored Catfish Genus Pterygoplichthys, appears in the journal Zoological Studies (57:7).

Non-native Pterygoplichthys (16 individuals visible) gathering around an adult female Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) and her yearling calf at Blue Spring Run, Volusia County, Florida. The catfish often settle on manatees, apparently to graze on algae and other epibionts growing on their skin; note the near absence of epibionts on the manatees, which normally have algae growing over their backs. Many of the smaller pale fish, barely visible, are juvenile Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus). Photograph by James P. Reid/USGS

According to the authors, “The genus Pterygoplichthys includes several popular aquarium species that have become invasive in tropical, subtropical, and warm-watered regions around the world.” Commonly called armored sailfin catfish, janitor fish, peces diablos (devil fish), or “plecos,” species of the genus exhibit most of the characteristics that predispose certain fishes to successful invasion. This suite of biological traits include:

(1) high fecundity
(2) broad physiological tolerance (i.e., salinity, pollution, and hypoxia [i.e., enlarged, hypervascularized stomachs that allow for air-breathing and survival for up to 30 hours out of water])
(3) rapid growth of 10 cm/year
(4) an armored exterior with powerful pectoral spines
(5) life span of more than 5 years
(6) high aquarium-vectored propagule pressure.

Regarding the final point, they say: “Human-mediated factors foster the spread of Pterygoplichthys spp., namely the popularity of members of the genus in aquariums and subsequently aquaculture, contributing to high propagule pressure. Once established, these fishes are extremely difficult to remove.” Other biologists have attributed the widespread invasion of plecos in the state of Florida to escaped stock from fish farms, also fueled by releases of unwanted specimens by irresponsible aquarists.

In researching the impacts of plecos getting into non-native waters, the authors used something called the “generic impact scoring system,” or GISS. The recorded or reported fallout from a pleco invasion in a geographic region includes both socioeconomic and environmental changes. The study attempted to find published reports on all valid species in the genus Pterygoplichthys (Fishbase currently lists 22 species in the genus), with a number of fish sold in the aquarium trade as plecos or sailfin catfishes. Their map shows the spread of six different species and one hybrid.

Impacts reported included displacing or elimination of native fishes, being a vector for nonnative parasites, damaging fisheries equipment, acting as egg predators of native fishes, reducing fish food resources (e.g., aquatic insects and aquatic vegetation), and decreasing yield of desirable food fishes and shrimp. In many places, the breeding habits of these catfishes have caused serious issues where males burrowing in soft substrates to build spawning caves have led to shoreline erosion.

As for the Florida manatees, the USGS biologists concluded: “Manatee responses (to be grazed upon by invasive plecos) varied widely; some did not react visibly to attached catfish, whereas others appeared agitated and attempted to dislodge the fish. The costs and/or benefits of this interaction to manatees remain unclear.”

Sources

The Global Invasion of the Suckermouth Armored Catfish Genus Pterygoplichthys (Siluriformes: Loricariidae): Annotated List of Species, Distributional Summary, and Assessment of Impacts
Alexander Benjamin Orfinger and Daniel Douglas Goodding
Zoological Studies 57: 7 (2018) doi:10.6620/ZS.2018.57-07
Published 14 February 2018

Download PDF Version of Paper

Interactions between non-native armored suckermouth catfish (Loricariidae: Pterygoplichthys) and native Florida manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) in artesian springs
Leo G. Nico , William F. Loftus , and James P. Reid
Aquatic Invasions 4:3 (2009)

Download PDF Version of Paper

Catappa & Company—
Terrestrial leaves to the aquatic rescue?

By Petra Fitz
Full article in AMAZONAS, May/June 2018

The leaves of Terminalia catappa (variously known as Catappa, Indian Almond, Tropical Almond, Sweet Almond Tree) are becoming increasingly popular among aquarists. The leaves of this tree, originally native to the Western Pacific, release a number of beneficial naturally occuring chemical ingredients into the aquarium. But what do they really do? And are there any alternatives?

References

Borisutpeth, P., C. Hanjavanij, A. Luangpirom, and O. Lawhavinit. 2001. Acute effect of tannic acid on intestine, liver and kidney of Oreochromis niloticus (L.). KKU Sci J 31 (3): 157–66.

Chansue, N. and N. Assawawongkasem. 2008. The in vitro Antibacterial Activity and Ornamental Fish Toxicity of the Water Extract of Indian Almond Leaves (Terminalia catappa Linn.). KKU Vet J 18 (1): 36–45.

Fitz, P. 2014a. Wenn Fische Schnupfen haben—Hausmittel bei leichten Krankheitsbildern. AMAZONAS 55, 10 (5): 64–70.

———. 2014b. Brennnessel, eine hervorragende Futterpflanze. AMAZONAS 55, 10 (5): 6–7.

Major, H. 2002. Untersuchungen zur Wirkungsweise von Birkenblättern (Betulae folium) und phenolischer Verbindungen, unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Beeinflussung von Metallopeptidasen. Dissertation an der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Watzl, B. 2001. Saponine. Charakteristik, Vorkommen, Aufnahme, Stoffwechsel, Wirkungen. Ernährungs-Umschau 48 (6): 251–3.

Watzl, B. and G. Rechkemmer. 2001. Flavonoide. Ernährungs-Umschau 48 (12): 499–502.

A mudskipper, with the prowess of the most intelligent dog, successfully begs for a tasty treat at ABC Aquarium in Penfield, NY.

At the start of March, we shared a viral mudskipper video posted by Facebook user Michael Fong on the AMAZONAS Facebook page. In the video, an aquarist is seen feeding pellet foods to a swarm of mudskippers by hand. Based on reader response, that video will likely wind up in our annual top-ten recap at the end of the year.

Researching the backstory on that video revealed a deeper and more wonderful reality; hand-feeding Mudskippers is totally a thing, and it’s totally awesome.

The often overlooked mudskippers, gobies of the subfamily Oxudercinae, are well known as the “walking fish.” They typically inhabit intertidal areas around the Indo-Pacific and even east Atlantic coast of Africa, and they are found in salinities from full freshwater to fully marine and everything in between, in temperate to tropical climates. Counts vary, but it’s safe to say that dozens of species in the subfamily qualify as mudskippers. They adopt a somewhat amphibious lifestyle and spend portions of their day terrestrially.

In the aquarium trade, they’re generally relegated to the world of oddball brackish fish that, at best, often get one tank out of hundreds at your local fish store, where they just seem to sit there as curios; they are interesting, but perhaps not taken all that seriously as fish you’d want to keep at home. Bu,t wow, mudskippers may have just won our collective hearts as possibly the most personable, interactive fish you could own (and I thought training my archerfish to jump out of the water to eat krill from my hands was pretty amazing). As YouTube user gacrotalus puts it: “A well-trained skipper…[is] man’s best friend.”

Check out this collection of aquarists feeding their mudskippers by hand. Do you have an example of aquarist-fish interaction that tops this? Tell us about it!

He Yi of Suzhou, Jiangsu, China, secured the top spot in 2018’s 200L-320L category with this entry, titled “Feng Ming Tree Ring.”

“Almost a poetic image. It reminds me of fairytale scenery…”
—ANDRE LONGARCO

A diversity of perspectives, materials, and styles rose to the top in this year’s Aquatic Gardeners Association Annual International Aquascaping Contest; sunken trees and underwater forest dioramas were a predominant theme. A prime example of the style is China’s He Yi’s ethereal 300-liter (79-gallon) aquascape, above, which prompted judge André Longarco to write: “Almost a poetic image. It reminds me of fairytale scenery. I can feel the breeze and the smell of the wet grass on the hill. The perspective is perfect but subtle. Actually, everything in this layout is subtle, discreet, and pleasant. The light in the image is perfect—strong and intense in the center, highlighting the important points of the layout, and smooth, almost diffuse in the outer areas…this one brought lightness and subtlety to the contest. I loved it.”

Excerpt from May/June 2018 AMAZONAS Magazine.

The Aquatic Gardeners Association is an international nonprofit organization of aquatic plant enthusiasts, open to beginners and experienced hobbyists alike. The annual AGA Contest is the only one of its kind to showcase different categories based on size and style. This sets it apart from other international contests, and it is the longest-running online contest in the hobby. The contest is divided into nine categories—six Aquatic Garden categories broken down by tank size, and three specialty categories: Biotope Aquascape, Paludarium, and Dutch Aquascape.

2017 was a banner year for the aquascaping contest, with the most entries entered in the contest since its start in 2000 and more than 600 aquascapes submitted. Each year, a different panel of experienced aquascapers judges the contest. This year, André Longarco of Brazil, Kam Wong of Hong Kong, and Shawn McBride of the United States were the esteemed judges for the contest. Marco Aukes judged the Dutch Aquascape category, and the AGA’s own Phil Edwards and Karen Randall assisted in the Biotope and Dutch categories. Major sponsors included Seachem and Complete Aquatic Systems.

For more information about the AGA International Aquascaping Contest and to view all of this year’s entries, as well as entries from past years, visit the AGA website at www.aquatic-gardeners.org.
—Bailin Shaw & Cheryl Rogers

AGA AMAZONAS GALLERY
All images Copyright © the AGA 2016 entrants. Click image for larger view.

AQUATIC GARDEN, Smaller than 28L (7 US gallons) category

“One Faith,” 2017 Winner of the Smaller than 28-L category. Aquascape by Matthew Israel O. Manes from Paranaque City, Manila, Philippines.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 45 x 21 x 26 cm (18 x 8.3 x 10 inches)
Volume: 24 L (6 gallons)
Lighting: 9W 6500K DIY LED lights x 2
Filtration: Jeneca hang-on-back (HOB) filter, 680 L/h
Additional Information: Controsoil, AquaVitro Envy fertilizer
Plants: Hemianthus callitrichoides (Cuba), Hydrocotyle tripartita, Christmas Moss, Mini Pellia, Water Sprite, Rotala sp. “Green,” Anubias nana “Petite,” Echinodorus tenellus
Fishes/animals: Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon innesi), Red Cherry Shrimp (Neocaridina davidi)
Decorative materials: Ryuoh stones, Tweety wood, local driftwood

Judges’ Comments
André Longarço: “Great work! It is almost impossible to believe that all of this could fit in this size tank! The proportions and details are perfect. The layout looks like it should be much bigger. Just one detail: in my opinion, an empty area in the front with sand would be better for perspective.

Kam Wong: “Beautifully arranged, detailed like a tank much larger…may have chosen another type of fish. Great job!”

AQUATIC GARDEN, 28-60 L (7-16 US gallons) category

“Sense of Nature,” 2017 Winner of the 28-60 L category. Aquascape by Jirawong Laopiyasakul from Pattaya Chonburi, Thailand.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 45 x 30 x 30 cm (18 x 12 x 12 inches)
Volume: 41 L (11 gallons)
Lighting: Chihiros A-Series LED x 2
Filtration: Eheim 2213
Additional Information: Controsoil, AquaVitro Envy fertilizer
Plants: Vesicularia ferriei, Fissidens fontanus, F. nobilis, F. splachnobryoides, F. zippelianus, Hyophila involuta, Fontinalis antipyretica, Plagiomnium trichomanes, Taxiphyllum sp. “Flame,” T. sp. “Spiky,” Riccardia graeffei, Crepidomanes auriculatum, Limnophila heterophylla
Fishes/animals: Least Rasbora (Boraras urophthalmoides)
Decorative materials: Local driftwood and river rocks

Judges’ Comments
André Longarco: “What a lovely layout! I feel like I’m inside the forest. Very detailed and careful work. Maybe the reflections could be more worked, and the weak point is the blue rock on the right side. What is the purpose of this rock? But a very impressive job.”

Kam Wong: “Beautifully done forest layout.”

Shawn McBride: “Excellent forest scape. The dusting of green on the wood combined with the detail and the nice mixing of plants and mosses make this scene very natural.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, 60-120 L (16-32 US gallons) category

“Follow Me 2,” 2017 Winner of the 60-120 L category. Aquascape by Heri Amir from Malang, East Java, Indonesia

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 60 x 35 x 30 cm (24 x 14 x 12 inches)
Volume: 63 L (17 gallons)
Lighting: DIY 100 watt high-power LED
Filtration: Eheim 2215
Plants: Mini Christmas Moss, Flame Moss, Weeping Moss, Bucephalandra sp., Rotala wallichi, Echinodorus tennelus, Marsilea tankeshi, Eleocaris sp. “Mini,” Mini Bolbitis (Bolbitis heteroclita)
Fishes/animals: Cardinal Tetra (Paracheirodon axelrodi)
Decorative materials: Rasamala wood, Seiryu stone

Judges’ Comments
André Longarco: “Layout very natural and balanced. The health of the plants is superb and the use of shadows amazing. The natural atmosphere is definitely alive in this layout. Maybe if the background were a little bit lighter it would increase contrast and perspective. Congratulations—almost perfect.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, 120-200 L (32-53 US gallons) category

“Montseny,” 2017 Winner of the 120-200 L category. Aquascape by Bernat Hosta Rovira from Barcelona, Spain.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 90 x 42 x 43 cm (35 x 17 x 17 inches)
Volume: 162 L (43 gallons)
Lighting: 75W LED
Filtration: Fluval 406
Additional Information: “This scape emulates a view of a mountain range named Montseny, located near where I live. A perfect place to enjoy nature!”
Plants: Bolbitis heteroclita “Difformis,” Mini Bolbitis, Bucephalandra sp. “Green Wavy,” Bucephalandra sp. “Mini Needle Leaf,” Ceratopteris thalictroides, Cryptocoryne parva, C. lutea “Hobbit,” Fissidens fontinalis, Riccardia chamedryfolia, Christmas Moss, Hemianthus callitrichoides, Alternanthera reineckii “Mini”
Fishes/animals: Cardinal Tetras (Paracheirodon axelrodi)
Decorative materials: Briar wood and slate stones

Judges’ Comments
Kam Wong: “Lovely forest layout and great attention to detail. Great job!”

André Longarco: “Very interesting proposal to present one more forest layout. I miss more and assorted plants in the middle ground. Only mosses are too obvious. The reflections are okay and the perspective too, but the foreground could be better. In my opinion, the small rocks could be smaller, and if white sand or something like this could be used in the first plane, we could have one more layer, more perspective and highlights. Great work, congratulations.”

Shawn McBride: “Fantastic forest scape. There is a lot of detail, and the sense of scale is superb.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, 200-320 L (53-85 US gallons) category

“Feng Ming Tree Ring,” 2017 Winner of the 200-320 L category. Aquascape by He Yi, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 120 x 50 x 50 cm (47 x 20 x 20 inches)
Volume: 300 L (79 gallons)
Background: White wall
Lighting: T5 H0 54W x 6
Filtration: Altman CF1200, CF100
Plants: Hemianthus callitrichoides, Glossostigma elatinoides, Echinodorus tenellus, Vesicularia ferriei, Vesicularia montagnei, Staurogyne sp., Bolbitis heudelotii, Ludwigia sp., Rotala wallichii, Heteranthera zosterifolia, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Rotala rotundifolia “Green,” Rotala rotundifolia “Red,” Riccia fluitans, Hygrophila pinnatifida, Cryptocoryne parva, Ludwigia inclinata var. verticillata “Tornado”
Fishes/animals:  Otocinclus sp., Rosy Tetra (Hyphessobrycon rosaceus), Green Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon simulans), Black Neon Tetra (Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi), Siamese Algae Eater (Crossocheilus siamensis). Shrimp: Caridina japonica
Decorative materials: Rhododendron root, landscape and volcanic stone

Judges’ Comments
Kam Wong: “Great concept. I can feel the power of the current against the trees in the picture. Excellent work!”

Shawn McBride: “A very creative aquascape that seems to be flowing in the water. A nice use of perspective and shadow give the scape a mood to match the scene.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, 320L or larger (85 US gallons or larger) category

“Breath of Wind,” 2017 Winner of the 320L or larger category and BEST IN SHOW. Aquascape by Roger Goh Yu Quan, from Singapore.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 150 x 60 x 55 cm (59 x 24 x 22 inches)
Volume: 495 L (131 gallons)
Lighting: ADA Solar RGB x 3
Filtration: Eheim Pro series x 2
Additional Information: Dosed with Seachem + AquaVitro fertilizers
Plants: Micranthemum sp. “Monte Carlo,” Fissidens sp., Riccardia chamedryfolia, Taxiphyllum sp. “Spiky Moss,” Staurogyne repens, Bolbitis sp.
Fishes/animals: 30x Glowlight Danio (Danio choprae), 50x Ember Tetra (Hyphessobrycon amandae), 20x Otocinclus Catfish (Hypoptopoma gulare)
Decorative materials: Branch wood, black aged driftwood, tiny wood vines, grey river rocks, lava rocks. Substrate: ADA Amazonia Light, ADA Power Sand, ADA La Plata, ADA Congo Sand, ADA Mekong Sand

Judges’ Comments
André Longarco: “Amazing, amazing, amazing. What beautiful work. Very natural and balanced. Great natural atmosphere and perfect perspective. Many points of interest make the eye wander through the layout. Maybe the driftwood in some places is too much and there could be a little bit more detail in the path. This is the kind of work that inspires me to keep working with aquascaping. Thank you for this awesome job.”

Kam Wong: “Awesome flow to this work of art. Great job!”

Shawn McBride: “Excellent use of perspective and scale. The scene moves from darkened underwater forest to the brighter unknown, which we are given just a glimpse of through the well-placed windows in the scape. The strategically-placed open spaces are accented well with small details of hanging branches or vines.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, Biotope Aquascape category

“Submerged Melaleuca Forest,” 2017 Winner of the Biotope Aquascape category. Aquascape by Tran Hoang Nghia from Can Tho, Viet Nam.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 120 x 60 x 60 cm (47 x 24 x 24 inches)
Volume: 432 L (114 gallons)
Lighting: Fluorescent 96
Filtration: DIY
Plants: Nymphaeaceae, Pistia stratiotes
Fishes/animals: Blue Gourami (Trichopodus trichopterus), Sparkling Gourami (Trichopsis pumila)
Decorative materials: Melaleuca wood

Judges’ Comments
Karen Randall: “I love this!”

Phil Edwards: “This is a natural-looking aquarium! I love the use of Cypress; it adds to the sense of scale.”

Bailin Shaw: “Extremely impressive biotope design of a flooded Melaleuca forest. The fishes and plants fit the biotope well. Well done!”

AQUATIC GARDEN, Dutch Aquascape category

“Down the Rabbit Hole,” 2017 Winner of the Dutch Aquascape category. Aquascape by Joe Harvey from Athens, Alabama, USA.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 122 x 61 x 61 cm (48 x 24 x 24 inches)
Volume: 454 L (120 gallons)
Background: Plastic mesh covered with Christmas Moss (back and sides) 
Lighting: 6x T5 HO, 54W each: 1x 3000K, 1x 6500K, 1x 420 Actinic, 2x TrueLumen Flora, 1x Zoo Med Flora Sun
Filtration: 2 large canisters with built-in surface skimmers
Additional information: Fertilization using DIY dry salts (KNO3, KH2PO4, Ferrous gluconate, Fe DTPA, custom micro elements). Tap water, pressurized CO2, 50% weekly water changes
Plants: Myriophyllum sp. “Guyana,” Acmella repens, Isoetes la-custris, Ludwigia sp. “Red,” Didiplis diandra, Pogostemon helferi “Red,” Hydrothrix gardneri, Penthorum sedoides, Barclaya lon-gifolia “Red,” Hygrophila corymbosa “Siamensis 53B,” Bacopa colorata, Oldenlandia salzmannii, Limnophila aromatica “Mini,” Persicaria sp. “Sao Paulo”
Wall Plants: Christmas Moss, Bucephalandra sp. “Brownie,” Hydrocotyle leucocephala
Fishes/animals: 8x Harlequin Rasbora (Trigonostigma heteromorpha), 21x Neon Tetras (Paracheirodon innesi), 11x X-ray Tetras (Pristella maxillarus), 9x Otocinclus Catfish (Hypoptopoma gulare), 3x German Blue Ram, 15x Amano Shrimp
Decorative materials: Blasting sand, Manzanita (Arctostaphylos sp.) branches covered with Fissidens “Fox” moss

Judges’ Comments
Marco Aukes: “Several entries have too many plants in their tanks, but I feel this one is a bit too empty. However, the plants look good, the groups show clear variations in contrast and height, and it is a really nice tank to look at. Maybe with just a bit more time the groups will grow a bit bigger and take away the empty feeling. All plants are very well placed, but please replace the red Persicaria sp. ‘Sao Paulo’ with a green plant.”

Phil Edwards: “Near perfect grouping, contrast, and spacing between the plants. The mossed sides and back add a lot to the whole aquarium.”

AQUATIC GARDEN, Paludarium category

“Valley Secret,” 2017 Winner of the Dutch aquascape category. Aquascape by Liu Yong from Fuzhou, China.

Aquascape Details
Tank size: 180 x 70 x 110 cm (71 x 28 x 43 inches)
Volume: 378 L (100 gallons)
Background: Plastic mesh covered with Christmas Moss (back and sides) 
Lighting: 40W NAL Colorful LED x 2, 10W NAL Colorful Mini LED x 19
Filtration: Eheim 600
Misting System: Large NAL sprinkler x 3
Plants: Bromeliads (Neoregelia sp. “Mini Fireball,” N. pauciflora “Baby Linda,” N. drungsiana, N. sp. “Green Mini”), Rhipsalis baccifera, R. ramulosa, Davallia bullata, Saxifrage, Hypnum plumaeforme, Leucobryum bowringii, Linter Moss, Sphagnum Moss, Java Moss, Mini Peperomia, Mini Water Banyan
Fishes/animals: Green Neon Tetra (Paracheirodon simulans)
Decorative materials: Black lava stone, Rhododendron sinogrande (Du juan) root

CREDITS
AMAZONAS Magazine
May/June 2017 (English Edition)
Order this Issue (Print Edition)
Subscribe to AMAZONAS

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 3, RARE CATS!, an issue dedicated to the quirky species that breeding could one day make available to more hobbyists. On the cover: Pseudacanthicus sp. LDA 105 “Typhoon,” images by Hans-Georg Evers.

The May/June 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale April 3rd, 2018.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

“It is time to feature Loricariids again—but those who expect the focus to be on L-number catfishes may be disappointed. Some of the most interesting species are rarely found in the aquarium trade, and it will take the kind of captive breeding progress reported in this issue for them to become obtainable and affordable for more aquarists.” Hans-Georg Evers, introducing the RARE CATS! issue.

AQUATIC NOTEBOOK brings you news from around the aquarium and scientific communities. In this issue, we map the global spread of invasive plecos, remember the life of Felipe Cantera, examine the hypothesis that Blind Cave Tetras may hold secrets to help sleep-deprived humans, and take a gamble on the new tetra Moenkhausia sp. “Yellow Kogal.”

Must-read insights for every pleco fanatic: Hans-Georg Evers and Jeffrey Christian report on the first success in breeding Pseudacanthicus sp. LDA 105 “Typhoon.”

Achim Werckenthin and Ingo Seidel present the Dwarf Needle Catfishes of the genus Acestridium, which are at times sensitive aquarium inhabitants that present a husbandry and breeding challenge for experienced aquarists.

There are numerous barbel-bearers among the catfishes in the family Loricardiidae, but the genus Rhadinoloricaria has been nothing more than a phantom in the minds of catfish lovers for a long time. Norman Behr and Anja Katzschmann explain how these mysterious fishes are finally being revealed.

Jeremy Basch shares his struggles and triumphs with the beautiful and unique Pinstripe Woodcat, Tatia strigata.

“There are some trips I will be talking about into old age,” starts Hans Georg Evers,”—for example, my adventures in the virgin forest of the Mamberamo in New Guinea, far away from the usual conveniences of our Western world. Almost everything went wrong on that trip—but this is one of the few remaining places on Earth where nature is still intact.”

As aquascapers around the globe are gearing up to compete in the Aquatic Gardeners Association’s annual international Aquascaping Content this fall, we look back at the best planted tanks to learn what it took to win in 2017.

Neotropical Cichlids have, at times, received a bad rap. Dr. Paul V. Loiselle writes in praise of worthwhile compact cichlids in a novel genus whose members were formerly known under more familiar names—Heros, Cichlasoma, Cryptoheros, and Archocentrus—and are now grouped as Amatitlania.

Michael Härtl and Dietmar Kecker interview Reinhard Schmid, owner of an aquarium fish hatchery in Ensdorf, Germany. Schmid is best known for his Cichlid production, and the hatchery is responsible for introducing aquarium strains such as the Iceberg Ahli and the hypomelanistic Turquoise Aulonocara.

Petra Fitz examines the science behind Catappa (Indian Almond) leaves as they’re used in the aquarium, and illustrates some alternatives as well.

Scott Fellman, “Chief Tint Officer” at Tannin Aquatics, embraces nature, discussing the humic and husbandry benefits of aquascaping with botanical litter from the tropics.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies—and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s must-read Species Snapshots bring insight into the new, unusual, and under-appreciated in the aquarium hobby and trade. This issue’s installment shines a bright spotlight on Killifishes. Our coverage includes Wachter’s Killifish (Aphyosemion wachtersi), Maratecoara splendida, the Gabon Jewelfish (Aphyosemion cyanostictum), Poropanchax stigmatopygus, the Potosi Pupfish (Cyprinodon alvarezi), and, for the catfish lovers, the Super Schwartzi Cory (Corydoras sp. CW028).

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

A Dwarf Pufferfish (Carinotetraodon travancoricus) feeding on bloodworms.

By Matt Pedersen
Excerpt from AMAZONAS Magazine
July/August 2018

Consider this case: “When I was working in tropical fish retail, we had a customer who was hyperallergic to bloodworms. He usually called ahead to make sure we were not feeding frozen bloodworms for the two or three days prior, because if we did, just walking into the store made him instantly unwell. Keep in mind that the entrance was 25–30 yards away from the fish section. Direct bloodworm exposure would send him to the hospital right away, as we found out the hard way.

“One day, before we knew of his sensitivity, we had fed bloodworms and I bagged fish for him, of course holding the bag with wet hands. A few drops of contaminated water on the outside seeped through the newspaper we wrapped the bag in and when he touched it, he literally fell over backwards. Luckily, he had an EpiPen in his bag. An ambulance rushed him to the hospital. This type of reaction isn’t common, but rashes are quite frequent and bloodworm dust is definitely the worst.”

—Reported by Stephan Tanner, Ph.D.
Senior Editor, AMAZONAS Magazine

Whether you have a touch of itchy hands or (rarely) a reaction so severe you’re heading to the ER, bloodworm allergy is a real health concern for some aquarists. A popular, richly nutritious, and extremely effective fish food that is usually sold in frozen or freeze dried versions, these bright red chironomid midge larvae are very attractive to finicky fishes. They are a classic and effective conditioning food and have long been used by aquarium fish breeders to get their broodstock primed for spawning.

Bloodworms get their common name from their bright red coloration, a result of the hemoglobins in their bodies. These hemoglobins are powerful oxygen scavengers that allow the larval chironomids to survive in organic-rich, oxygen-deprived bodies of water. The same hemoglobins are responsible for the allergic reactions that some people have to coming in contact with bloodworms.

Pigmented by rich hemoglobins, these live bloodworms are a classic fish food used by serious aquarists to feed broodstock and finicky fishes.

Researchers have understood for a long time that bloodworm allergies are found mainly among aquarists. From a 2005 report, Fishing for Allergens: Bloodworm-Induced Asthma: “Although chironomids can be found in Europe, North America, and parts of Asia, allergies to them are mainly due to their use as fish food. Individuals at particular risk of chironomid-induced allergy include fish farmers, fishermen, pet shop owners, and others who keep fish or work with fish” (Wu et al. 2005).

Chironomidae sp. midge female, the adult form of in the bloodworm life cycle. These insects are founding widely in North America, Europe and parts of Asia.

Awareness and pervasiveness of allergy

But how many aquarium enthusiasts are aware of this potential health hazard? AMAZONAS Magazine sought to get a clearer picture of bloodworm allergies in the aquarium hobby, and in May 2018 we conducted an informal online survey of aquarists, receiving 445 responses from the magazine’s readers.

Nearly 99 percent of respondents said they had fed bloodworms to their fishes, yet a full 40 percent were unaware of the allergy risk prior to our survey.

A large minority of respondents (47 percent) self-identified as being free from bloodworm allergy. However, 34 percent identified themselves as having a known or suspected allergy to bloodworms, and 19 percent said they were “unsure.”

Reporting that one in three aquarists may have a bloodworm allergy seems extremely high and raises the question of participation bias: were people who believe they have an allergy more likely to participate than those who don’t? Perhaps, although an earlier study (Bauer 1992) had remarkably similar findings—36.1 percent of people who had “hobby-related” exposure to bloodworms showed sensitivity to the associated allergens in bloodworms.

How do bloodworm allergies present?

Of the people reporting symptoms in response to bloodworm contact, 25 percent had a reaction the very first time. Of those who didn’t have an immediate reaction, 30 percent had an allergic reaction within a year’s time, and the median time to first reaction was four years.

Symptoms of a bloodworm allergy are readily identifiable (see table). Severity of reaction was rated on a scale of 1 to 10; very mild (tolerable, requiring no mediation) to most severe (potentially requiring a trip to the emergency room). Among individuals who initially responded that they were “unsure” if they had a bloodworm allergy, the average severity rating of symptoms was 2.9/10. Of the people who identified as having a known or suspected allergy, the average rating was 5.6/10.

A rundown of symptoms reported by survey respondents who had known or suspected bloodworm allergies.

Acceptable risks?

A full 64 percent of the respondents who reported having known or suspected allergies said they were still coming into contact with bloodworms. When asked what they were doing to prevent or minimize bloodworm-associated problems, solutions included hand-washing (although often noted as ineffective) and minimizing contact by wearing gloves, using feeding tongs, feeding proportioned frozen worms (which require no direct handling), and wearing face masks. Others noted that only certain forms of the food caused reactions; multiple respondents said they avoid freeze-dried bloodworms but seem okay when working with frozen forms. But many, once they realized they were allergic, opted to avoid bloodworms entirely.

Dried bloodworms are anecdotally reported to cause more allergic reactions, but contact with frozen or live worms can also have effects on those with sensitivity to the hemoglobins in these insect larvae.

Continuing information

“With the increasing popularity of aquariums, allergy to chironomids may become less of a novelty and become something clinicians should be aware of when searching for the cause of a patient’s atopic symptoms,” concluded researchers Keith CP Wu and colleagues in 2005. In other words, if you feed bloodworms, keep this information in mind should you wind up going to the doctor with symptoms.

If you are experiencing symptoms, it’s best to get medical help or advice

To take our three- to twelve-question bloodworm allergy survey, see a more detailed breakdown of the data on which this report was based, get more information, and read the stories of other aquarists, please visit our online Bloodworm Survey Hub at http://www.reef2rainforest.com/bloodworm-allergy

Further Reading

Warning: Bloodworm Allergies Are Real for Some People

References

Fishing for Allergens: Bloodworm-Induced Asthma. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2877067/

Insect hemoglobins (Chi tI) of the diptera family Chironomidae are relevant environmental, occupational, and hobby-related allergens. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1399031

Chironomidae hemoglobin allergy in Japanese, Swedish, and German populations. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8198244

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 4, CONGO TETRAS, offers advice on the care and breeding of both classic and new species from Central Africa. On the cover: a composite of tetras from the Congo, family Alestidae. Images: F. Wang.

The July/August 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and on its way to magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale June 5th, 2018.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription coming and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents for the July/August 2018 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

“Both the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo, two countries separated by the middle reaches of the Congo River, have become more accessible in recent years, allowing some exporters and travelers to collect little-known species for the aquarium trade and for science. We, the aquarists, are the lucky beneficiaries.” -Hans-Georg Evers, introducing the CONGO TETRAS cover feature in the new issue.

Hans-Georg Evers starts our Aquatic Notebook by introducing a pioneering effort by Hudson Crizanto Gonçalves to establish a commercial catfish breeding project in Brazil, initially focusing on the production of highly desirable Pseudacanthicus species, along with other species not currently on Brazil’s “positive list” (approved for wild harvest). Also in this issue’s Notebook: Black & White Stingrays, a cautionary tale and results from our Bloodworm Survey, breeding the freshwater pufferfish Tetraodon schoutedeni, and a new understanding of how fish are able to orient themselves facing into water current, even under the cover of darkness. It’s a Notebook you won’t want to miss!

Little is known about the biotopes of the Congo tetras, family Alestidae, as the countries of origin—the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—are either very unstable politically or rarely visited by aquarists. Roland Numrich reports on his collecting trips there.

The Ogooué (Ogowe) River system is home to some of the most beautiful tetra species in the Old World, including, in the extremely acidic black water, Africa’s live gold: Phenacogrammus aurantiacus. Stanislav Kislyuk shares his success keeping and breeding the species.

Long-time AMAZONAS readers may remember that in AMAZONAS January/February 2012, our L-CATS issue, we introduced “crazy catfish keeper” Torsten Schwede. He has now dedicated most of his extensive facility to the care and breeding of Congo tetras, family Alestidae.

Back in the January/February 2018 issue of AMAZONAS, a vivarium built by Dr. Adeljean Ho was included at the tail end of Sam Rutka’s stunning feature on Paludariums. Ho’s work piqued our curiosity; as promised, we return with a feature-length interview to gain insight on how Ho blended his passion for orchids, amphibians, fish, and shrimp into a beautiful slice of the jungle. You can learn even more in the online bonus; the full-length unedited interview with even more photography will be published soon!

Paul V. Loiselle, Ph.D., suggests that small sizes and mellow temperaments make Cryptoheros excellent “starter” species for hobbyists who wish to expand their horizons to include the Central American representatives of the Cichlidae. Learn more in the newest issue.

If you’ve never seen an Anableps, a fish which can see above and below water at the same time, you’re in for a treat. If you have seen them, maybe you’ve wondered how they might fare in an aquarium. All is revealed as Hans-Georg Evers introduces you to the Four-Eye Fishes. Time to set up your next tank!

Andrew and Jeanette Blumhagen investigate and breed a bizarre new mountain river loricariid catfish that may or may not have barbels.

AMAZONAS Sr. Editor Michael J. Tuccinardi reports on the early aftermath of Brazil’s Belo Monte Dam on the biodiverse Rio Xingu.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s must-read Species Snapshots illuminates everything new and gaudy, trendy and timeless, or simply overlooked and under-appreciated in the global aquarium trade. This issue’s installment returns with a wide range of coverage, including a striking Albino Asian Arowana (Scleropages formosus) being put into cultivation; Africa’s smallest known dwarf cichlid, the Congo Pygmy Cichlid (Nanochromis minor); the albino form of the Threadfin Acara (Acarichthys heckelii); two unique freshwater gobies from New Zealand, the Redfin Bully (Gobiomorphus huttoni) and Cran’s Bully (Gobiomorphus basalis); and we close with a recent discovery that may represent a new species, the Orange Tail Bee Shrimp from Indonesia, Caridina sp. “Orange Tail.” All of this is exclusively in the newest issue of AMAZONAS Magazine.

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 5, NEW SHRIMP SENSATIONS, brings readers a fresh look at the dwarf and fan shrimps. On the cover: various dwarf shrimps, photographed by Friedrich Bitter.

The September/October 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and arriving at the homes of magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale August 7th, 2018.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents for the September/October 2018 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

We welcome the new AMAZONAS publishing and editorial team which includes many long-time staff members, bringing AMAZONAS into its next chapter with diverse viewpoints and a wealth of experience in the freshwater hobby.

“This time we have chosen dwarf and fan shrimps as our main topic,” writes AMAZONAS Editor-in-Chief Friedrich Bitter, introducing the new issue. “These fascinating little creatures have firmly established themselves in the aquarium hobby—and not (just) as live food. They are suitable for both beginners and professional breeders alike—and sometimes even such experienced people as the latter can still find major surprises with these many-legged little fellows.”

Lamontichthys are generally regarded as very tricky to keep, and breeding them is often out of the question. Daniel Madörin of the Basel Zoo has shown once again that this isn’t always the case, as revealed in his interview in our Aquatic Notebook. Also in this issue’s Notebook: Danio quagga, and German breeding ring equipment.

Uwe Neumann discusses the creation of new ornamental dwarf shrimp varieties in “Shrimp Mix”.

If you are newly interested in freshwater shrimps or just considering a new purchase, you may wonder at the countless variants of Neocaridina davidi now available and how to keep them. These tiny shrimps are fascinating to watch and easy to maintain, if you follow a few simple rules. Learn more in Friedrich Bitter’s article, “Colorful Cherry Shrimps: Keeping Neocaridina davidi”.

Step-by-step, author Sam Rutka walks you through the ins and outs of setting up and aquascaping a simple, functional aquarium for dwarf shrimps, in “A Shrimp Tank Primer.”

“Green Lace Shrimps: A breeding surprise,” by Dietmar Schmidt, tells the tale of an unexpected breeding opportunity with these popular aquarium residents.

Follow along as Hans-Georg Evers transports you to a small, seasonal pool in the vicinity of Puerto Maldonado, to discover the clues that nature provides when it comes to breeding potentially recalcitrant fishes.

Check out the gorgeous Tricolor Water Lily (Nymphaea micrantha) and learn about its husbandry and unique propagation methods in an article by Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand, with additional content from AMAZONAS Executive Editor Ann Whitman.

Tired of “algae eaters” that grow too big and do their job poorly, or not at all? Paul V. Loiselle, Ph.D., will point you in the right direction with “Algae Eaters That Really Do!”

Introducing the first installment of “Century Species,” our new column to showcase fish species whose aquarium-hobby career has spanned more than 100 years and have remained in the hobby despite stiff competition from trendier offerings. Our first entry is a killifish, the Red-Chinned Panchax, Epiplatys dageti monroviae.

“Heterandria formosa comes from the subtropical southeastern United States and is anything but gaudy—but the Least Killifish is still a very special little livebearer,” writes Michael Kempkes.

With a retrospective look at Brine Shrimp spanning nearly a century, Jason Oneppo looks at the aquatics industry that Artemia built, as San Francisco Bay Brand Celebrates 50 Years: 1968–2018.

These events are not to be missed! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Visit North America’s best aquarium shops and find AMAZONAS Magazine for sale as single copies and hard-to-find back issues. View this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s Species Snapshots are your guide to everything bold and beautiful, arcane and awe-inspiring, or even just a bit different from what you’re used to seeing at your favorite fish store. This issue’s installment returns with a wide range of coverage, including a unique species of hillstream loach, Gastromyzon lepidogaster; Glossogobius aureus, a unique predatory goby from Sungai Lembo; a snake-eel from New Guinea, Lamnostoma kampeni; Orthochromis sp. “Chomba” (sp. “Lufubu”), which is an interesting and modestly-sized haplochromine cichlid from Zambia; Protomyzon whiteheadi, an attractive hillstream loach from Borneo; and finally, for those of you who are into brackish fish or big cichlids, or are simply searching for something fundamentally unusual for the aquarium hobby, check out the Tapiroid Grunter, Mesopristes cancellatus. All of these fish are covered in great detail, exclusively in the newest issue of AMAZONAS Magazine.

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 7, Number 6, MARVELOUS MEDAKA, serves a definitive look into the coming wave of ornamental Japanse Ricefish, poised to be a huge hit worldwide. On the cover: Colorful new varieties of Medaka(Oryzias latipes). Images by Friedrich Bitter

The November/December 2018 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and arriving at the homes of magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores. On sale October 9th, 2018.

• Readers of the Digital Edition can access it now: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

• Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

• To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

HEREWITH, a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

Our Table of Contents for the November/December 2018 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine: your guide for finding cover-to-cover must-read content and exciting features from expert contributors. Read the TOC online here.

AMAZONAS Executive Editor Ann Whitman looks towards fall and winter and introduces the new column by Hans-Georg Evers, What’s Up? The inaugural installment features a collecting adventure in the Andes Mountains of Peru.

Why Japanese Ricefish? AMAZONAS Editor-In-Chief Friedrich Bitter explains: “We are devoting part of this issue to detailed coverage of the Japanese Ricefish, which has an ever-increasing number of fans, and not only in its native land. This colorful killifish is an ideal subject for stocking seasonal outdoor containers.” And that’s just the start of it!

You thought you knew Sturisoma. Well, welcome Sturisomatichthys to your arsenal. And that’s just the beginning of our Aquatic Notebook! Turn the pages for stories about miniature Sleeper Gobies and rare Corydoras catfishes.

The Japanese Ricefish (Oryzias latipes) is not among the challenging aquarium fishes. These small, colorful fish take virtually everything in stride and reward you with offspring without too much coaxing. Interested? Read “Introducing Medakas, A fish for many interests”, by Friedrich Bitter.

When is the last time you thought about how a fish would appear when viewed from above? “View from the top: Multicolored Medakas”, illustrates how these diminutive jewels are ready to fill the niche with the growing demand for paludarium and patio pond fish.

Author Fumitoshi Mori takes you on a tour of noteworthy Japanese Medaka breeders to learn their secrets and viewpoints in “Three Medaka breeders, three different approaches”.

“Mexico is large and, from the aquarist’s viewpoint, offers a multitude of destinations and habitats. Every one of them is worth a trip, and many are home to their own special cichlids. The rivers around the village of Matías Romero in southern Mexico are one such rewarding destination.” Join Michael Pilack as he transports you to the southwestern Mexican state of Oaxaca in search of unique Central American Cichlids.

Johannes Graf tells the tale of joining Gary Lange, Wim Heemskerk, Henni Ohee and Marten Luter Salossa for a journey deep into the wilderness of Indonesia’s West Papua in search of long-lost rainbowfishes and new species yet undiscovered. What did they find?

Hans-George Evers introduces a host of new L-number plecos from the Andes in the first installment of his new “What’s Up?” column, an AMAZONAS exclusive!

Altolamprologus calvus could be one of the most emblematic Tanganyikan cichlids. They’re always in demand, so Wilhelm Klaas ensures that you’ll be prepared to succeed with these special cichlids.

“If ever there was an aquarium fish that deserves to be called ‘classic,’ it is the Paradise Fish (Macropodus opercularis).” Get a definitive look at this perennial favorite in the second installment of our Century Species series.

Maike Wilstermann-Hildebrand shares the secrets of “Recognizing nutrient deficiencies in aquarium plants”, sure to become a handy reference for every aquascaper!

As fall and winter arrive, these aquarium events are a great excuse to get out of the house and reinvigorate yourself in the company of fellow fish geeks! Discover what’s happening in the aquarium world through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

The next time you’re wondering where you should shop for your next fish, consider the retailers that offer AMAZONAS. They clearly share similar tastes, and they’re a great source for single copies and hard-to-find back issues. You can view this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s Species Snapshots bring you the newest, hottest and most arcane freshwater aquarium fish from around the globe. Setting the international benchmark for what’s in, this issue’s installment includes Badis laspiophilus, Ambassis interrupta, the sleeper goby Mogurnda cingulata “Mimika”, the Chain Danio (Danio sysphigmatus), the Gulf Coast Pygmy Sunfish (Elassoma gilberti), and an interesting relative of the White Cloud Mountain Minnow, Tanichthys sp. “Da Nang”. Get all the details exclusively in the newest issue of AMAZONAS Magazine.

• Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue now!
AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the Digital Edition and App Editions immediately.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

Or check out AMAZONAS Apps for mobile devices—via iTunes, Google Play for Android devices, and the Amazon Kindle store.

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 8, Number 4, NATURALLY NATIVES, arrives just in time for summer! On the cover: Top: Rainbow Darter (Etheostoma caeruleum) Middle: Tangerine Darter (Percina aurantiaca), Bottom: Greenside Darter (E. blennoides). Images by Isaac Szabo.

The July/August 2019 Issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and arriving at the homes of magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores!

This issue is packed with stunning photos of fishes you can find in your own backyard! Rivaling the most colorful of reef fishes, U.S. native species such as darters, minnows, and sunfish will have you eager for your next aquarium to emulate a native fish biotope!

If you’ve overlooked United States’ natives as drab ditch fish, this issue will surely make you rethink that assumption! In fact, there is a native fish—and article in AMAZONAS—for everyone. If you’re a fan if cichlids, sunfish such as a Pumpkinseeds, Long-Eared, or Dollar Sunfish may strike your fancy. Prefer schooling fish? Minnows, chubs, shiners, and dace are sensationally colored Cyprinids. Appreciate benthic dwellers? Check out the darters! Nano-fish? Elassoma species will excite you! This issue also incorporates plants and invertebrates capable of being kept with native fish. Truly something for everyone!

Rounding out the rest of this issue includes Hans-Georg Evers’ trek to at an ornamental fish market in Bangkok, the first installment of Oliver Lucanus’ step-by-step build of a Río Xingú biotope, and a breeding report for Betta albimarginata ‘Malinau’ from Hansjürgen Diek.

Readers of the Digital Edition can access this issue starting June 11th, 2019: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses for instant access. The AMAZONAS digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers and tablets.

To gain access to the current issue and an archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

Before subscribing, we are offering this INSIDE LOOK at the newest issue – a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

The Table of Contents for the July/August 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine. You can view this TOC online!

AMAZONAS Executive Editor Ann Whitman reminisces on her early experiences looking for and catching native fishes. Dipnetting in ditches or seining in streams was always an Easter-egg hunt for her – the fish pulled from the water were always a surprise! Join the hunt for beautiful native fish in this issue of AMAZONAS Magazine!

Contributor Derek Wheaton, known for this social media page Enchanting Ectotherms, reminds us that collecting and keeping native fish is thrilling but can be a detrimental activity for native ecosystems. While it makes intuitive sense to collect native fish, observe for a short period in an aquarium, and release them back into the wild, this is a major problem! Be sure to read about the ethics and responsibilities associated with keeping native species.

Many aquarists believe that utilizing flash photography can be detrimental (or even lethal) to fishes. A new scientific study suggests otherwise, at least in the fishes studied. Learn all about it in “The Flash Factor”, which starts our Aquatic Notebook column. Also in this issue: what visual cues might drive social behavior in fishes, and a look at black soldierfly larvae (BSL), a promising ingredient in fish food applications.

Darters live in 41 of the 50 United States, so you probably have some of these goby-like river gems right in your own backyard! Want to know more? Our AMAZONAS cover story, Dashing Darters, by Friedrich Bitter, gives hints for locations to hunt for darters and the information on how to maintain them in captivity! It can be done and we tell you how!

When you think of sunfish, what comes to mind? Probably not a thumb-sized stunner living among leaf litter in slow-moving water! These adorable little gems hail from the southeastern U.S. and can be kept in small, unheated, and even unfiltered aquaria. Elassoma species are spunky little natives that you just might find endearing enough to keep yourself! Flip through pages and pages of photos and information in this issue of AMAZONAS, as shared by author Marco C. Haupt!

You can find shiny flashes of red, white, and blue schools of breeding minnows in river systems across the United States! Friedrich Bitter’s article, Local Color, will make you think twice about casting native fish as drab ditch denizens. Best of all, you don’t need to SCUBA to see this brilliant breeding show! Read this article to learn more!

Author Flick Ford explains his hybrid approach to keeping planted aquaria and native fishes. By using old school methods and new age technology, this method is as easy as it is successful. Read all about it in our COLD FUSION article!

Native sunfishes fill the ecological niche otherwise filled by cichlids in other areas of the world. Likewise, these pugnacious piscines come with personality! Mark Binkley brings a focus on American Sunfish, their diversity, care, feeding and breeding. Expand your horizons by keeping some of these feisty fishes!

Considering the importance of the Río Xingú as a biodiversity hotspot and the location of major conservation issues, we added some Brazilian flair to this issue! Oliver Lucanus has been studying this river system for years and decided to recreate this threatened habitat in captivity. Follow his journey step-by-step in creating a Río Xingú biotope!

Crayfish aren’t just bass fishing bait! Friedrich Bitter surveys North America’s dwarf river crayfishes from the genus Cambarellus an easy to keep group of native invertebrates!

Breeding Betta albimarginata ‘Malinau’ was truly a science experiment for Hansjürgen Diek. In this article, his trials and tribulations resulted in a massive success! His perseverance with this mouthbrooding betta will make you want to pick up a challenging species and crack their unique code for breeding success!

If you’re one of those aquarists who visit any and all aquarium shops, this article is for you! Ever wonder how fish are sold in other countries? This installment of Notes From the Field from Hans-Georg Evers is full of photos and information about Bangkok fish markets – you won’t find this information anywhere else!

Die-hard aquarists know how to extend a vacation by attending an out of town aquarium event! Or spice up a stay-cation and discover what’s happening in your local aquarium world. Either way, you can stay up to date with events through our print and online Aquarium Calendars. Have an event coming up? Send Janine Banks an email so we can let your fellow AMAZONAS readers know about it.

Aquarium shops are the cornerstone of the hobby, a place to shop, commiserate, and meet new friends. Show your support for the hobby by shopping at a retailer who supports AMAZONAS and our mission to offer the best information in a stunning package. These retailers are a great source for single copies and hard-to-find back issues. You can view this list online as well.

AMAZONAS Magazine’s Species Snapshots bring you the newest, hottest and most arcane freshwater aquarium fish from around the globe. Setting the international benchmark for what’s in, this issue’s installment includes Myersi cichlid (Caquetaia myersi), Rineloricaria cf. lanceolata ‘Metallic’, Hypostomus nematopterus, and the Orinoco Dwarf Pike Cichlid (Chenicichla sp. ‘Orinoco Dwarf’). Get all the details exclusively in the newest issue of AMAZONAS Magazine!

Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue starting June 11th, 2019!
All AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and read the web-based Digital Edition.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

The post AMAZONAS Magazine “NATURALLY NATIVES” Inside Look! appeared first on Reef To Rainforest Media, LLC | CORAL Magazine | Microcosm Publishing.

EnviroProducts made from the Black Soldier Fly (left to right): oil, meal, frass, and dried larvae. Frass, the waste product, is used for natural fertilizer

A special excerpt from AMAZONAS Magazine, July/August 2019, by Gary Elson

An excerpt from the July/August 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine, NATURALLY NATIVES. Click to buy the back issue.

Black Soldier Fly larvae are being touted as a miracle food of the future for pets as well as humans. For now, however, they are an innovative, high-quality food for fish and other animals.

When early aquarists compared what fish eat in nature with the limited foods available in the nascent hobby, they began looking back to nature. They conducted live-food collecting parties in springtime, hunting for daphnia, copepods, and mosquito larvae. The brine shrimp cyst industry was born, with the tiny food collected from Utahan, Californian, Chinese, Canadian, and Russian lakes and bays. Laboratories produced wingless fruit flies.

Over time, the quality and selection of prepared fish foods has skyrocketed, but serious aquarists, especially those who intend to breed their fish, are never satisfied. Flake and pellet of varying quality are fine for growth and display, but for many species they don’t always provide what’s needed for breeding. Plant eaters have always been fairly easy to feed, but insect-eaters have traditionally been more difficult and expensive to accommodate. Alternative protein sources, such as costly frozen foods, freeze-dried bugs (less appealing and nutritious after processing), lean heart muscle from goats or cows, or chopped up earthworms just haven’t done the job. Most aquarists are unprepared to culture bugs at home, and if we do, they are often too large for small insectivorous fishes.

Development of Black Soldier Fly Larvae

Almost 20 years ago, while seeking alternative protein sources, Allen Repashy found the Black Soldier Fly Larvae (BSFL, Hermetia illucens). As many scientifically inclined vivarists do, Repashy was scouring the web for scientific papers. While looking for a better feeder insect, he stumbled upon a 1994 scientific publication called “A value-added manure management system using the black soldier fly” by Dr. Craig Sheppard.

In his article, Sheppard described the nutritional value of the BSFL and Repashy noted its potential, particularly the high calcium levels and calcium/phosphorus ratio. For a reptile breeder, these are crucial values, and finding it in a natural insect could prove to be very useful to fish- and herp-keepers.

Repashy contacted Dr. Sheppard and proposed the idea that these insects and larvae would make excellent feeders for reptiles, fishes, and other insectivores, if they could be commercially raised as a hygienic food source. Dr. Sheppard responded with enthusiasm, because he had a personal history of commercially raising mealworms and understood the market potential of these flies. Their communication led to the construction of a pilot plant at Dr. Sheppard’s property, and feeding trials at Repashy’s breeding facility. The new food showed intriguing potential.

Dr. Sheppard’s company became the first commercial facility in the world to produce black soldier fly larvae, commercially known as Phoenix Worms. A few years later, after promoting these new feeder insects, they quickly became an invaluable alternate food for exotics.

With his well-respected background in the reptile food industry, Repashy also quickly saw the potential for BSFL to be processed into a meal that could be used in his Repashy Superfoods gel formulations. While the larvae were easy to raise, breeding the flies and collecting eggs in huge numbers and under sanitary conditions were challenging. At the time, the economies of scale and production systems just didn’t exist to economically produce such a product.

It took another 10 years, but one day, Repashy was contacted by John Gramieri, who was the Mammal Curator at the San Antonio Zoo and the chairman of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association’s PAX TAG (Pangolin, Aardvark, and Xenarthran [anteaters, tree sloths, and armadillos] Taxon Advisory Group), about helping with a diet formulation he was using at the zoo for these little-understood species. Gramieri mentioned to Repashy that he was getting small amounts of dried BSFL from a place called EnviroFlight in Ohio, for his formula, and passed on the contact information.

Repashy quickly reached out to EnviroFlight and its mastermind Glen Courtright to discuss BSFL availability. They were successfully producing dried larvae (Enviro-Bug), but had yet to develop a way to produce a fine grain meal due to the fat content of the larvae. Collaborative brainstorming led to the construction of the first pilot plant to produce a clean and green BSFL meal. It was the first such plant in the world, although certainly not the last. Within two years, Repashy’s gel Superfoods was EnviroFlight’s first commercial customer for BSFL insect meal, EnviroMeal, which provided a catalyst for BSFL meal uses in other areas.

Now in 2019, BSFL production facilities are popping up throughout North America, Europe, and Asia motivated by the animal feed possibilities. The product has been recognized as a real breakthrough for its ability to reduce the demand for other, more environmentally demanding, protein sources such as fish meal.

BSFL as Fish Food

A small innovative idea has grown into a large improvement in fish and reptile nutrition. Repashy has successfully marketed high-quality soldier fly-based gel foods for more than six years now, and several competitors have introduced extruded BSFL feeds. There is a strong marketing push behind BSFL foods and hobbyist experiences are positive. They report that even finicky species of fish that usually will not eat dried or prepared foods will often attack soldier fly foods with no reserve, and color development also seems excellent.

Breeding success is a key indicator of food quality for aquarists. Fish don’t reproduce on subpar foods. Although many easily bred fish will respond to non-insect-meal-based commercial foods, the more challenging species require live food or an equal equivalent. Many picky fish, which don’t even bother to taste traditional flake or pellet foods, not only eat BSFL foods but will breed on a diet of BSFL-based pellets and gel. Commercial foods can’t completely replace live foods, but in the absence of live foods, there’s a reliable alternative.

A thriving industry has grown up around BSFL in the years since Dr. Sheppard’s work—one that aims to take what Repashy noted and move it from our fish tanks and into our own food chain. As an alternative protein source, BSFL may become prominent not only in our animal feed, but on our own plates, as well. We’ll no doubt see how that project plays out over the next few years.

References

Sheppard, D. C., G. L. Newton, S. A. Thompson and S. E. Savage. 1994. A value added manure management system using the Black Soldier Fly. Bioresource Technology. 50: 275–279.

The post AMAZONAS Excerpt: The Good Soldier appeared first on Reef To Rainforest Media, LLC | CORAL Magazine | Microcosm Publishing.

AMAZONAS Magazine, Volume 8, Number 5, MAN-MADE FISHES, on sale August 6th, 2019! On the cover: Left: Flowerhorn Cichlid. Upper right: Oranda Goldfish (Carassius auratus), Lower right: Crescent-tailed Molly (Poecilia sp.).

The September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine is printed and arriving at the homes of magazine subscribers, local aquarium shops, and better bookstores!

For our 5th issue of 2019, we decided to take on a bit of controversy as we showcase one of the aquarium hobby’s most polarizing issues: Man-made Fishes. Says publisher and Sr. Editor Dr. Stephan Tanner, “My reason for devoting an issue of AMAZONAS to this topic is based on the realization that we have to discuss it, because man-made fishes have been around for a long time and are here to stay, just think of koi (Cyprinus carpio) or goldfish (Carassius auratus). If we do not cover man-created strains and forms, and debate the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, we leave the field to emotional grandstanding or worse, legal regulations without qualified input.”

Where do you stand on the issue of man-made fishes? Will your opinions and viewpoints be supported or challenged by what awaits on the pages inside? Man-made Fishes may be one of our most through-provoking issues to date!

But be assured, this isn’t an issue simply full of Goldfish and Flowerhorns! We look at natural hybridization among Xiphophorus (the swordtails and platies), part two of a Rio Xingu biotope aquarium, and the endangered Scleromystax catfishes of the Mata Atlantica. Breeding enthusiasts will love stories on breeding the Panda Garra (Garra flavatra), the Brunei Beauty (Betta macrostoma), and Parancistrus nudiventris. There is something for everyone in this issue!

Readers of the Digital Edition can access this issue starting August 11th, 2019: AMAZONAS DIGITAL EDITION

Paid subscribers can log in with their email addresses and password for instant access. The AMAZONAS web-based digital version is available for desktop and laptop computers, tablets and phones.

To gain access to the current issue and a digital archive of back issues, become a subscriber by following this link:

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE!
Get your personal subscription and don’t miss this big issue—just $29 per year. Save 40% off the newsstand price.

For print enthusiasts, if you missed this issue, you can always buy a hard copy from our AMAZONAS Magazine Back Issue Shop.

If you just can’t wait to see what’s showing up in the mail, or your favorite retailer keeps all the AMAZONAS in their protective poly sleeves, we are offering this INSIDE LOOK at the newest issue—a sampling of articles and opening pages for readers curious about what the issue will bring.

The Table of Contents for the September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine. You can view this TOC online!

Introducing our issue, Executive Editor Ann Whitman shares that, “When I started out as a kid, I knew little about fish and just bought whatever I liked and my allowance would afford. While part of this is still true, my priorities, choice of fishes and what I find beautiful has matured.”

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Stephan Tanner, Ph.D., shares his views on the diversity of man-made fishes in the aquarium trade.

Sometimes, taking a look outside your own sphere of interest can yield deeper understandings and fresh ideas. Matt Pedersen asks, “What lessons can be learned about ornamental fish breeding by examining the world of orchid keeping?”

Echoing the sentiments of Marie Kondo, Michael Tuccinardi suggests that aquarists “Keep the Fish that Bring You Joy”!

Aquatic Notebook kicks off with a revision to the Skunk Catfish we all thought we knew as Corydoras arcuatus. Also, Project Selva: Amazonian Art for Conservation.

Many hobbyists nowadays frown upon hybridization of different species to create new forms of fish. Contributor Michi Tobler reveals the secrets of hybridization among swordtails and platies, which doesn’t always require human intervention.

Love them or hate them, the progenitors of GloFish® were originally developed to detect water pollution. Highly experienced commercial breeder Bill Shields was at the right place at the right time and shares his story of how the GloFish® was brought into commercial production.

It’s important to realize that manipulation of fishes goes back millennia; goldfish expert Gary R. Hater provides an introduction to the history and modern-day selective breeding of Carassius auratus.

This is the sad story of a lost paradise; a nightmare for the once pristine Malili lakes in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Hans-Georg Evers reports in the “Flowerhorn Invasions of Lake Matano”.

In part 2 of our Aquarium Masterclass by Oliver Lucanus, we examine the aquarium’s selection of endemic and biotope-appropriate fishes recreating a slice of the Rio Xingu.

Home to unique endemic fishes, most recognizable among them the unique cory cats of the genus Scleromystax, Erik Schiller illuminates South America’s Atlantic Forest, the endangered Mata Atlântica.

The beautiful algae-eating panda garra (Garra flavatra) has captured the attention of aquarists, but as Friedrich Bitter explains, it will take more work to unlock the secrets of breeding them at home.

Betta macrostoma is a holy grail fish for many hobbyists. Daniel Elster shares how to keep and breed this tricky Borneo native.

Challenge Accepted: Breeding Parancistrus nudiventris. Dutch pleco breeder Jacqueline Heijmen Bennett-Leaver explains how this breakthrough success was achieved.

Hans-Georg Evers dives into the tropical streams of the Indo-Pacific region, home to climbing gobies of the genera Stiphodon, Sicyopterus, Lentipes and several others.

Make sure you don’t miss out on an exciting aquarium-related event in your state and make sure your events get seen! Reach out to janine.banks@aquaticmediapress.com to learn more. View our events calendar online, anytime!

Look for AMAZONAS Magazine in outstanding local aquarium shops throughout the U.S. and around the globe! You can find these retailers in our online sources guide anytime! Want your shop listed? Email janine.banks@aquaticmediapress.com to find out how!

AMAZONAS Magazine’s Species Snapshots bring you the newest, hottest and most arcane freshwater aquarium fish from around the globe. In this issue, we share in-depth looks at Leporinus sexstriatus, Pseudocrenilabrus sp. ‘Lake Mweru yellow weed picker’ and Hyphessobrycon myrmex (the fire ant tetra). This exclusive content is found nowhere else but the pages of AMAZONAS Magazine!

Already a subscriber? ACCESS this issue starting August 11th, 2019!
All AMAZONAS subscribers can log in with their email address and password and read the web-based Digital Edition.

• SUBSCRIBE and never miss an issue of AMAZONAS. Paid subscribers receive the classic Print Edition, as well as Free Access to the Digital Edition.

The post AMAZONAS Magazine “MAN-MADE FISHES” Inside Look! appeared first on Reef To Rainforest Media, LLC | CORAL Magazine | Microcosm Publishing.

Why is a fish like the Veil Gold Marble Angelfish acceptable, yet a longfin catfish is not? Image credit: Leriaphoto/Shutterstock

A special excerpt from the September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine, by Ann Whitman

An excerpt from the September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine, MAN-MADE FISHES. Click to order the back issue!

Cognitive dissonance best describes some aspects of our hobby’s relationship with man-made fishes. I’ve kept and bred veil angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare), for example, but wouldn’t consider buying long-finned panda corys (Corydoras panda) from the local shop. Countless swordtails and platies have graced my aquariums over the years, yet I now avoid Endler’s livebearers (Poecilia wingei) from unknown gene pools, since they are often crossed with guppies. I have kept and still admire oranda goldfish, but am appalled by balloon-belly rams (Mikrogeophagus ramirezi), mollies (Poecilia sp.) and other distorted fish. Is there any rational way to reconcile these inconsistent and contradictory attitudes?

With increased experience and knowledge, my fish-keeping aesthetics and awareness have evolved, as they must for anyone who has enjoyed and continued learning in this hobby. When I started out as a kid, I knew little about fish and just bought whatever I liked and my allowance would afford. While part of this is still true, my priorities, choice of fishes and what I find beautiful has matured. I pay much more attention to the provenance of my fish, for example, now that I understand how my pocketbook power and ability to breed them affects some species’ very survival.

As a horticulturist and botanist, I am well accustomed to humankind’s long history of creating hybrids for agriculture and ornamental plants. Species have always mixed on their own without human intervention, however, and will continue to do so, thereby creating new species. While many of these natural and man-made hybrids have become invasive nuisances, so have plenty of introduced, non-hybrid species.

Ann Whitman in the field: The St. Lawrence River in Québec, Canada spills into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the world’s largest estuary, before mixing with the Atlantic Ocean. Photo: D. Whitman

The one practice that does deserve condemnation, however, is animal cruelty. In the 1980s, I worked in a pet store and saw the first “painted” glassfish (Parambassis ranga) arrive in our tanks. These were expensive, frail, and looked garishly out of place. I soon learned how these fish were made, and we never ordered them from the wholesaler again. Fortunately, the major pet store chains in the U.S. stopped selling them, too, and the popularity and availability of painted fish has dropped considerably in this country. The practice of dyeing and tattooing fish remains popular in some Asian countries, however. Stripping fish of their protective coat, dipping them in temporary dye and then into a caustic solution to regenerate their slime, is simply cruel and inhumane. The same is true for injecting dye under the skin of fish with needles. I also find fault with intentionally selecting and breeding fish that cannot function and breed normally.

Each fish keeper has their own values and goals in the hobby. Some will choose to breed rare and endangered species; others will perfect show-quality flowerhorns. Some will keep strict biotope tanks and others will opt for GloFish®, fluorescent gravel, and plastic plants. Some of us prefer tanks full of South American characins, loricariids, and Corydoras species; others prefer Rift lake cichlids and Synodontis catfishes. We are all aquarium hobbyists, and as long we treat our fish humanely and each other with respect, neither is right nor wrong. Vive la différence!

Ann Whitman is the Executive Editor of AMAZONAS Magazine.

The post Viewpoint: Cognitive Dissonance in the Aquarium Hobby appeared first on Reef To Rainforest Media, LLC | CORAL Magazine | Microcosm Publishing.

Dyed parrot cichlids have been dipped in a caustic solution to strip their slime coats, then into a dye solution, and finally into a chemical that stimulates slime production. Colors are temporary. Photo: O. Lucanus

A special excerpt from the September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine, by Stephan Tanner, Ph.D.

An excerpt from the September/October 2019 issue of AMAZONAS Magazine, MAN-MADE FISHES. Click to order the back issue!

“Man-made animals” have become a controversial topic over the past two or three decades. While humans have domesticated animals for the better part of some 15,000 years (MacHugh et al., 2016), the topic has turned into a heated debate between widely opposing sides. Unfortunately, rather than offering an informed discussion that expands everybody’s horizon, many critical voices just deplore such specimens without qualifying their stand. Proponents meanwhile simply disregard the critics or worse. My reason for devoting an issue of AMAZONAS to this topic is based on the realization that we have to discuss it, because man-made fishes have been around for a long time and are here to stay, just think of koi (Cyprinus carpio) or goldfish (Carassius auratus). If we do not cover man-created strains and forms, and debate the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, we leave the field to emotional grandstanding or worse, legal regulations without qualified input.

Man-made fishes and shrimps now come in a variety of forms, and I group them here in four broad categories based on how they have come into being:

Mutants: organisms selected for certain traits from spontaneous or induced mutations (albino, color, fin, or body shapes), such as countless strains of goldfish, koi, guppies, long-finned bristlenose plecos, barbs, tetras, balloon mollies and balloon blue rams, and crippled rainbowfish and gouramis, etc.

Hybrids: the offspring resulting from crosses between species or populations. Examples now omnipresent in the trade include flowerhorns, parrot cichlids, bettas, angelfish, discus, platies, swordtails, and Taiwan and bee shrimps.

Genetically modified fish (GMO): transgenic fish (aka GloFish®) have entered the market as barbs, tetras, danios, and sharks.

Physically modified fish: physically altered and tortured by tattooing, dyeing, cutting, or painting.

The Good:

At least among the mutants and hybrids, there are strains that are well established and hardly make anyone cringe: for example, wagtail platies, coral swordtails, black harlequin rasboras (Trigonostigma heteromorpha), or gold barbs (Barbodes semifasciolatus).

Interestingly, flowerhorns caused an uproar upon entering the trade, yet many devoted enthusiasts happily breed fancy swordtails, angelfish, or shrimps. Maybe they are unaware that the vast majority of fancy platies and swordtails are the product of crossing Xiphophorus maculatus with X. hellerii or X. variatus many generations ago. Or that many domestic angelfish are crosses of various local populations or species. The same is true for domestic discus strains and many fancy shrimp forms.

GloFish carry various color genes from jellyfish and other sources, but otherwise these fish are genetically “normal”, in many cases actually less aberrant from the wild fish than many mutants or hybrids. Demonized by many as the end of fish keeping, they are quite popular among kids. I view them the same way my parents regarded comic books when I was a kid. While my comics were not the best literature, at least I learned to read. Ultimately, I graduated to more sophisticated literature and magazines. Hence, if a youngster fancies a tank with GloFish danios or barbs, let it be! Almost every single one will graduate to “real fish” down the road. And for a hobby that notoriously lacks beginners, we could surely use a little man-made help.

Ultimately, as long as the animal swims normally and can exhibit its behavioral repertoire, creating man-made strains from mutations and crosses poses no ethical dilemma. Hybrids, however, should be clearly labeled as such and not sold as new species or forms of existing species. This is especially true for rainbowfish species which cross easily, resulting in hybrids that are difficult to tell apart. Thus, great care is necessary to keep wild lines pure, and honest disclosure is a must.

This balloon pearl gourami (Trichopodus leerii), has been selectively bred for its deformed spine. Photo: H.-G. Evers

The Bad:

While many mutants or hybrids are a matter of taste, there are some with abysmal distortions (ballooning, crippled vertebrae, skull deformations) that can hardly swim. Some parrot cichlids are so deformed that they have trouble eating. Then there are stingrays with partially missing disks, the so-called bat-rays. Most of these horror-show participants are produced in Asia where there is a large market for these grotesque animals. In my opinion, the trade should abstain from importing and marketing such extreme breeds.

Tattooing words and symbols with needles or lasers injures fish, such as these juvenile giant gouramis (Osphronemus goramy). Photo: O. Lucanus

The Ugly:

Enthusiasts and the trade need to establish a policy of humane conduct in the aquarium trade.

I should not need to spell it out, but dyed, tattooed, or otherwise tormented fish have no place in the hobby. Physical modification on live animals is in no way justifiable and violates basic animal welfare. Some extreme breeds of goldfish also belong to what I call “torture breeds”, although goldfish enthusiasts will counter that, with the correct care, they can do just fine. Luckily, some of the fanciest strains are not hardy enough for the mainstream trade, hence remain limited to connoisseurs.

Setting Rules and Limits

The above examples show that there is no categorical “right” or “wrong”, unless the animal suffers from man-made physical modifications. Enthusiasts and the trade need to come together to establish a set of moral and ethical rules, call it a policy of humane conduct in the aquatic trade. This is far better than restrictive laws and regulations that are nearly impossible to enforce. GloFish are illegal in Europe, yet available, if you know where to look. Sound familiar? By the same token, we have not managed to root out illegal drugs despite wasting billions of dollars. Accordingly, only a genius believes a black fish market could be outlawed and effectively controlled.

Stephan M. Tanner is a publisher and senior editor of AMAZONAS.

As hobbyists and trade partners, we must go ahead in setting limits. If we don’t, someone else will and we are very likely not going to welcome such restrictions. We are the experts who know what it takes to keep our animals healthy; we know their requirements, and we know what hurts them. Consequently, we are in the best position to propose reasonable rules, limits, and if necessary, write the laws that regulate the aquatic trade. We here at AMAZONAS Magazine welcome discussion and correspondence on the topic of man-made fishes. With that, I leave you to indulge in the best hobby in the world.

Reference

MacHugh, D.E., G. Larson, and L. Orlando. 2016. Taming the past: ancient DNA and the study of animal domestication. Annual Review of Animal Biosciences 5: 529-351.

The post The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly appeared first on Reef To Rainforest Media, LLC | CORAL Magazine | Microcosm Publishing.