I don't know if it's the same everywhere, but for the longest time, importing pencilfish was a losing proposition. No one would buy them, and even the well known ones like marginatus stopped showing up in this country. You could get farmed beckfordi, and that's all.
And the red pencils changed that. The last time I looked at my retail online friend's shop, he had 5 different Nannostomus. Now that there's incentive, they are being found. The bleak side of that is many of these newly encountered species weren't previously collected because they were hard to get to. Destroy the rainforest and suddenly, it's no longer a barrier to exploration, and fish never before collected can be brought out for as long as they don't go extinct because of that economic growth and expansion.
There are great numbers of aquarium possible species aquarists have never seen, and may never see before they're catalogued or have gone extinct. We know way less about this planet than we think we do.
But in the meantime, I find our hobby's new interest in pencils is great, and "meeting"
@Innesfan and
@Newbie as pencil keepers is very informative. I'm playing with tried and true species that have long been in the hobby to hone my skills with them, but down the line I would like to try some of these expensive ones. I might need a life of crime to pay for them, but they are pretty interesting.
The high prices have an edge. If people are unable to afford the fish, then the market will dry up and they'll be lost to us. As with all really interesting, off the beaten track fish, if we can't breed them and create networks, then in the 20 year optics, they'll be gone.
Pencilfish nastiness is there. I run in fear from the splash tetra group's ways, but pencils can be managed.
