Glofish.

[helterskelter]

Glofish are becoming more and more common these day's in the hobby, in the last year I've seen 3 or 4 shops with a few fish for sale, their a "Man Made" fish so are not nateral in nature, but are a resualt of adding specific jellyfish gene's into eggs of fish.
The two species used are Zebra danio's Brachydanio rerio and the medaka Oryzias latipes
Only some of the resulting fry take the jellyfish gene's into the genetic make up and can then be reproduced if some was the breed them.

They are a strange fish as they do glow in the dark.... Adding a UV lighting system they reflect UV light in a visible wavelength that we can see. and with no other lighting it's a haunting sight to see these fish swimming around glowing away.

TK-1 GREEN www.azoo.com.tw

TK-2 Fluorescent Zebra-Red www.azoo.com.tw​

Their are 4 main colour types the Red, Green, Yellow and Purple.
But now their is what's called the Candycane coming out.

TK-3 Fluorescent Zebra-Candycane www.azoo.com.tw​

I at first did not like the idea of messing with these fish as their great fish by nature but Azoo has done amazing things to these fish and i have sadily grown to like them more and more as i've seen more.

As these fish are genetically altered they do breed true, and if your luckey enough to so do you will have more glofish. Now the problem here is that Glofish are a patent of Azoo and breeding them is fine but if you sell them you will be breaking the law unless you have their authorization to sell them.

So if you was to breed them then you going to have some happy friends.


Edit
Since first posting this article, these fish are banned in the UK and most of the USA

 

[sylvia]

I see very little wrong with them as long as they don't end up in the wild (where they wouldn't survive though anyway so they hardly pose a threat). I have to say, actually, I see a major plus side to them - and that's that they fill the niche for dyed species without any cruel practices.

I think people should also read up on what genetic modification actually entails before they judge them. A lot of people shy away from the idea with only a vague image of what the phrase means.

 

[tmack]

I finally saw these today for the first time in a lfs that I hadn't yet visited. Very beautiful fish, but still a bit too pricy for me. I think they were $9 each. They had the fluorescent green & yellow types. I still haven't decided if I'm "ethically OK" with the way they genetically "designed" these fish, but I suppose it's not really much different than cross-breeding, etc.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

As far as i am aware they do not suffer from the process which made them have such unusual colouring and things, so i think its ok in that respect (its not like dying or tattooing fish or anything like that). I mean, in some senses its not a great deal from selectively breeding fish to have certain characteristics and colours and things- the betta as we know for example is quite different from the betta's you'll find in the wild.

But as for me personally, i'd rather have normal looking danio's than glow in the dark ones or something. I think its a bit materialistic buying a fish purely because its been made to glow in the dark or something (then again i guess its not that different than someone choosing a blue tailed guppy 'cos of the blue tail over a guppy with yellow tail), but its just not something that really appeals to me personally. Apart from selectively bred colours, i prefer my fish to be un-tampered with and be as close to their natural forms as posible.

 

[2chains]

has anyone heard of a glow in the dark tetra? i think my LFS has it misslabeled. I believe its actually one of the red zebra danios but they say its a red zebra tetra which i have never heard of before?

 

[helterskelter]

Glofish will glow in the dark, but only under UV light or Black light.

Red zebra's are a genetically altered fish which if u read the whole first post explains this.
[edit]
Sorry u said tetra... ye it would be a danio or medaka

 

[tmack]

It's not really the ethics of genetically engineering the zebras - I've no problem with that. There are genetically engineered plants as well. It's more of a question as to where it will all lead us to, if we start genetically engineering all types of living things, including humans, for the traits that we want? Insert a gene for this, and one for that, etc. The question might be more "when" than "if" I suppose. Oh well, I'm getting off topic I think!

 

[chilledtim]

me want!!

 

[bogusmove]

Bet they are popular with their tank mates at night...

"Look mate!! I'm trying to sleep! Will you PLEASE turn out the light!"

 

[luque]

no matter what they are very nice looking fish

 

[kribensis12]

They are very pretty and I had them at one point and the bred and the babies were blue!!!!!!! The parents were orange and green but there babies were blue!!!!!! But my heater exploded and all the fish were killed.

 

[vancouver]

I think they are neat.. If I could find healthy ones at a decent price I would consider buying them.

 

[fishboy619]

i personally hate it, why do people think they have to mess with nature, they look horrid to me. a bright,glow in the dark fish does not appeal to me in anyway. its also cruel to inject the fish with they genes.i certainly wound have one if someone paid me to keep them.

 

[tmack]

i personally hate it, why do people think they have to mess with nature, they look horrid to me. a bright,glow in the dark fish does not appeal to me in anyway. its also cruel to inject the fish with they genes.i certainly wound have one if someone paid me to keep them.

Hi fishboy. No harm done to the fish. Nothing injected. I have a biology/chemistry background, but I'm certainly no expert in the field of genetic engineering. What they did was somehow originally work on a very early egg stage of the fish, and then somehow (under a high powered microsope) replaced a gene on a chromosome (DNA) of the zebra with a gene from a jellyfish, then re-inserted the chromosome back into the empty egg, and the eggs developed into these brightly colored zebras that fluoresce (glow) under a UV light (blacklight). The gene from the jellyfish is what gave the fish their bright color and fluorescence under blacklight.

It's kinda hard to explain, but if you think of chromosomal DNA as a very long freight train, and then picture replacing one of the cars in that freight train with a different one, before it reaches it's destination, that's about as simple as I can make it. In this case the destination of the "train" was the development of the egg and the hatching of the zebra fry. These fish reproduce future generations as the colored zebras, so once you've engineered the first couple of fish they breed true, and the gene switching doesn't have to be done again.

Sorry if that didn't make sense, but I don't know how to simplify it any more than I did.

 

[fry_lover]

my own personal view is that its just another example of man taking the p*ss out of fish, just another thing that will appear on You Tube soon, perhaps not as cruel as some of the other sh*t that goes on.

So whats wrong with just keeping "normal fish"? How far do you want to go?

Its peeps wanting more "exitement" from fish keeping, which is fair enough (in a way) but when's all the nonsense gonna stop?

I reckon if peeps want fish like this, they better off downloading a good screen-saver and saving their money LOL