Brackish Fish Down The Toilet?+ Ethics

Marine/Freshwater?

Fish Crazy
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Most of my LFS stopped carrying Gynothorax tile a while back and most places no longer have brackish sections. They only have a few very small low end brackish fish. Are people going to stop keeping brackish fish because of the economy or is it that the novelty has worn off? I know where to get my own fish myself so I should be ok. I wonder what everyone else is supposed to do. A lot of the fish I can get are quite difficult fish to keep.

Also is it cruel to keep an American Eel in a spherical 50 gallon tank with only decorative glass pebbles. This was what I found when I went to a certain "theme park" with a sea monster ride. The glass pebbles look like the ones that go into vases. They are like pancake shaped marbles. The tanks are barren and the eels are like 2ft long! They frantically pace around. They probably have to replace them weekly. Just how well could this setup work? Is it as cruel as I think?
 
I think there's a huge difference in the way the hobby is pursued in the US when compared with, say, Japan and Western Europe. So what happens in the US isn't necessarily (or even remotely) a guide to the hobby on a worldwide scale.

In the US, the hobby is divided into basically two financial centres, low-end community tropicals and high-end marine tanks. Relatively few people keeping freshwater fish are bothered about rare or top-quality livestock, and relatively few people specialise in things like planted aquaria or serious Rift Valley communities. Most of the money sloshes about the very low end: cheap plastic tanks, mass-produced community fish, fancy/albino fish, and so on. A lot of people graduate from that to marines simply because there isn't anywhere else to go. Hence the idea that being an "advanced" aquarist in the US is the same thing as being a marine aquarist.

(This isn't to say there aren't good fish shops in the US with rare fish, or advanced freshwater aquarists keeping them, but they're a tiny minority compared to the sheer size of the market.)

In the UK, Germany, Japan and a few other places you have much more interest in things other than community tropical tanks. You have thriving markets for rare catfish, wild-caught cichlids, unusual plants and so on. Stores will routinely stock fish that cost over 20 UK pounds, whereas in the US you simply don't see people buying $40 freshwater fish. The money spent in Europe on things like high-end plant substrates, fancy filtration systems and all the other bits of hardware is also very different to what (most) people in the freshwater end of the US hobby are prepared to spend.

I don't get why American fishkeepers are less demanding that European or Japanese fishkeepers, but they are. Countless freshwater fish and shrimps and snails have become common in the EU and Japan but are very hard to find in the US. But it's really up to American fishkeepers to demand more from their retailers. To specifically ask for rare species, and to be prepared to spend the money. Until they do, it's going to be betta bowls at one end of the market and reef tanks at the other.

Cheers, Neale
 

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