I Want To Emigrate!

[dwarfgourami]

I've been googling the rarer poeciliids for weeks and keep coming up with all these Norwegian websites, beautiful photographs, records of meeting of the Poecilia Association, hints on breeding, all in Norwegian. Last night I hit on this wonderful aquarium forum, with subforums for all the common fish groups. I went straight to the livebearers of course and it was amazing! All these members who have *everything* and who keep swapping it among themselves. Rare phallichthys and neoheterandrias and goodeids- you name it! And whenever somebody expressed an interest in a fish, even the rarest, somebody else would come up with "Oh, I've got a colony of those, you could have some". I want to go and live in the promised land of the poeciliids!!!

 

[nmonks]

Rare livebearers are not difficult to obtain in the UK (or the US, for that matter) if you know where to look. If you visit the British Livebearers Association web page, you will see they have both a mailing list and regular auctions. The mailing list allows people to "swap" fish, start up new colonies, and share information. The auctions are where people buy and sell fish. The next one is in Redditch early next month.

http/www.britishlivebearerassociation.co.uk/

Equivalent groups exist elsewhere on the planet, for example the American Livebearers Association.

http/livebearers.org/ALAPublic/Default.htm

If you simply want to go out and buy some, the places I know of to look are Wildwoods and especially Wholesale Tropicals. According to Tropical Fish Finder, Wholesale Trops currently have:

Alfaro cultratus
Ameca splendens
Girardinus metallicus
Heterandria formosa
Nomorhamphus liemi liemi
Poecilia cf. reticulata 'endlers'
Potamotrygon histrix
Priapella intermedia

Certainly enough to be going along with!

Cheers,

Neale

 

[dwarfgourami]

Thanks Neale,

I didn't mean to sound negative about this country; I do visit both the BLA website and Tropicalfishfinder regularly and they are great resources. I was just amazed at the lively interest and abundance of species found in such a small country. And the high quality of the photographs: when you google poeciliids some of the best pictures always seem to be by people with Norwegian names.

 

[nmonks]

I noticed the same thing when researching halfbeaks; it was aquarists in Norway and Italy that seemed to be keeping the full range of them. I actually think we get a lot of those species here, but retailers and importers simply lump them all in as Celebes halfbeaks or wrestling halfbeaks. I've seen at least 3 species sold as the former, and two in the latter.

As for photography, I just don't think we in the UK have much of a tradition in nature photography. There are nature photographers certainly, but per capita, seemingly not that many. For whatever reason, like keeping our liquor and sweeping streets, nature photography just doesn't seem to be something we're good at.

It's odd, these national trends. If you look at the majority of aquaria in the UK, relatively few are actually pretty. We seem to like giant tanks will killer catfish and whatnot. In America, community tanks seem to be the thing, often rather lurid ones to my taste, with red swordtails with koi-carp angelfish. In Japan, of course, there's the Nature Aquarium, while in Germany, wild-caught fish of moderate size seem to be more popular. I wonder how these trends happen?

Cheers,

Neale

And the high quality of the photographs: when you google poeciliids some of the best pictures always seem to be by people with Norwegian names.

 

[fishykisses]

my family is in Norway - i wonder if my aunt woud express ship some to me?!
Probably not legal though.