Let’s talk GloFish

[GaryE]

We may think of glofish as unattractive, but that's because we know what they are.
Glofish on the other hand live perfectly normal lives so whilst I wouldn't have them, I can see the attraction and I do think dome look rather nice (there - I've said it!)

I'll back you up. I've seen a dark Pristella maxillaris type 'glofished' in local stores, and it caught my eye. Pristella tetras are really easy to breed, so I have produced some every now and then. I had trouble finding ones that weren't human modified, and I prefer the wild fish over the linebred things and the glofish. If I want them, I have to breed them.

But easy to breed with silvery flanks makes them ideal for the pet trade - cheap to produce and with no natural flank pigments to get in the way of the inserted genes.

There's no nuance with the glofish, and in general, the jellyfish genes make them all the same colours no matter whether it's tetras, barbs or anything else the industry invests in. I do find the sameness and lack of patterning dull - plus they don't tell me any stories the way a fish with colours from a long evolutionary history might. But at a first glance, the reddish Pristellas made me look.

I find widow tetras, the usual glofish offering to be ugly fish in any form - one of my least liked tetras. You can turn them pale green, pink or yellow and they still look like cheap candies. The danios are better looking. But none will get into my tanks - wild danios have them beat hands down (to me).

 

[MaloK]

I seen glow fish tanks with glow decor, glow plants, glow skittles substrate, glow filter, glow everything...

With a blue light on the top... I admit that in their natural environment they disappear with their specialized camouflage...

Never seen anything worse...



What's the point of having something natural in the most unnatural way...

 

[Back in the fold]

I feel sorry for the fish that this happened to . The old staple fish in the hobby that I grew up with , I call them my old friends and I feel for them when I see the treatment they’ve received from mad scientists and I can’t get mad because what’s done is done but I am mad and I’m also mad at the people who buy them and perpetuate this crime . Everything in the world doesn’t have to be a commodity and a source of filthy lucre . To do this to a fellow creature on this earth is treasonous to life . I hate it .

 

[gwand]

If you want to see a living creature light up, stick your finger in a light socket!

 

[GaryE]

The glo-light glo-fish tank just looks like a seventies Disco. And they were wondrous environments... not.

I seem to be turning into an easy going old man who says live and let live, after a lifetime of axe swinging, wrath of Odin berserker in a Monastery fishkeeping opinions. Some things I think are awful become popular, and there's no accounting for taste. Usually when we beat this subject to death, we wander into fancy guppies, linebreeding, weird mutations and their relationship to glo-fish. It becomes like a bar fight started by the terrible words "you like your fish as ornaments, don't you kid".

But whatever gets people started into fishkeeping, maybe it will lead them to different things.

 

[gwand]

Yes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art started out first displaying Elvis in Velvet but eventually moved on to oil paintings by the Masters.

 

[GaryE]

Yes. The Metropolitan Museum of Art started out first displaying Elvis in Velvet but eventually moved on to oil paintings by the Masters.

That's okay. The Prada had velvet matadors before Goya. Those bulls were so lifelike, unlike the large eyed maiden with the tears the Louvre started with. They eventually got the Mona Lisa, but no velvet painting ever had cracks in its face.

I'm no artist, but I had fancy guppies and high fin swordtails once upon a time.

 

[Innesfan]

The glo-light glo-fish tank just looks like a seventies Disco.

Oh, the 70's discos were infinitely more appealing than that.

 

[gwand]

That's okay. The Prada had velvet matadors before Goya. Those bulls were so lifelike, unlike the large eyed maiden with the tears the Louvre started with. They eventually got the Mona Lisa, but no velvet painting ever had cracks in its face.

I'm no artist, but I had fancy guppies and high fin swordtails once upon a time.

I’m a hypocrite. I still like fancy guppies and endlers.

 

[MaloK]

I didn't knew there where Glo Angels an Cories... Too...

What a relaxing view...

 

[GaryE]

I didn't knew there where Glo Angels an Cories... Too...

What a relaxing view...

I don't believe those are glofish. From the dye patterns, they look like glassfish injected with fluorescent dye. That's not a matter of taste - that's cruelty and animal abuse.

 

[MaloK]

Sorry I didn't see them correctly.

I was blinded...

 

[Burleson]

But I think you also have to take in to consideration that when they were experimenting they probably didn’t get it right on the first try and that animal that hatched could be deformed or have many things wrong with it so their begging experiments were in my opinion animal cruelty
(I don’t know if I worded this right lol)

 

[GaryE]

@Burleson Bear in mind they weren't developed for the hobby as a commercial product. They were created using zebra danios for water treatment plants, where there colour changes could provide a warning of problems.
It was later that the fishfarms got the idea of marketing them as ornamental fish.
My cousin was a cancer researcher and part of that job was developing different danio versions to learn about the spread of that dreaded disease. We have a lot in common with fish, body wise, and that allows for some valid research. It's tough on the danios though.