TwoTankAmin
Fish Connoisseur
As some may know I am a bit of a pleco nut. I keep and spawn several different plecos, mostly Hypancistrus. I have been breeding zebra plecos for about 5 years now and they are one of my favorite fish. So for me being able to hear Hans speak was a real treat.
Firstly, he is a great speaker, both entertaining and informative. For the most part we get our information from folks who have never been in a wild habitat, nor collected or studied the fish in the wild. So being able to hear from, an afterward talk with somebody who has made it a very exciting evening for me.
One of the things that really impressed me was when he talked about the collection of zebras. He has actualy gone out with the locals who invited him to try his hand. here is my best recollection of how he described the experience.
Firstly, he explained that zebras live pretty deep, from 5 to 15 meters down (for the Americans here that is 16.4 to 49 feet deep). He also said that the current was unbelievable. Hans has had lots of scuba diving experience, but the locals do not have this gear. They use a compressor in the boat attached to long air lines. the divers use rocks as weights to get down to where the fish are. Because they are so deep it is virtually pitch black down there. So one sees almost nothing and everything is done by feel. The way they collect is the feel for "cavelike" spots and either reach in or overturn rocks and feel for the fish and catch them by hand. Hans said he could barely stay in place holding on with both hands for dear life and wished he had a third arm. But the divers are collecting by feel using one hand while using the other to hold on.
Because only the males cave, males are mostly what they catch this way which explains why females are much harder to get. Hans said even as an experienced diver he had never been down in such a strong current. He said he was so scared he needed to change his pants (I toned that down from how he phrased it). He noted the collecting process was extremely dangerous and that deaths among the divers were common. His guides were pointing to spots and telling him that here this one's son died last year or over there that a diver had drowned a few years before.
Despite the high prices paid for these fish once they reach their final destination, the divers received very little money for their effort. So the next time you buy a wild caught zebra pleco, bear in mind somebody may actually have died trying to make that possible.
Hans also discussed the fate of the river and its inhabitants as well as the indigenous people as a result of the Belo Monte dam. This is another subject on which I have strong opinions. Hans felt folks should not buy fish not on the IBAMA approved list such as zebras. My view is the opposite. We both agreed that zebras, and many other fish, will become extinct very soon. This is why I believe that every zebra that can be taken out is one that can't be killed by the dam project.
Hans also showed photos of his and a few other folks setups for breeding. He related that he had seen one zebra breeding setup in Indonesia (or perhaps one or the other Asian countries- forgive my old brain) where the person was producing a few 100 zebra fry regularly every month. But he has about 300 adult breeders to do this. This is one reason Hans is against the taking of wild fish, he feels there are now enough folks around the world spawning these fish to insure their survival as a species.
He also had a lot of great pictures he had taken of a variety of plecos and a few other fish from the Xingu as well as photos showing what the river looked like. There were also pictures of the local areas. He explained that at the height of the ornamental fish business before IBAMA instituted the export bans that in Altamira, a city along the Xingu at the head of the big bend, the city population had swelled from about 10,000 to double that. It was all due to people working in the collection and exportation of tropical ornamental fish which in the 1980s was an exploding business. In those days you could buy almost anything and new fish were showing up all the time. The people in the fish business used to live by gold mining or burning rain forest and causing all kinds of pollution in the river. Once they got involved with the fish trade they began to understand that the river, and it fish, were making them all a decent living and became concerned with its health and preservation. Since the bans the trade has died and the people have been forced back to gold mining and burning the rain forest to make farmland and of course doing the same harm this always does. It is very depressing. Hans also noticed that since the ban most of the exporters had been forced out of the trade and that the odds were most of them would never return even if the bans were most taken off. They all lost too much to want to risk it again.
One of the best parts of my evening was being able to chat with Hans and a few other folks afterward. And trust me when I say I picked his brain just a bit
I was so impressed that the next day when I returned to attend a workshop on how to photograph fish and tanks that I attended his second presentation on Fishes of the Sulawesi. I have never kept any of these fish and didn't really know where Sulawesi was until then- 'Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands" (thank you wikipedia). I will not bore you with the details since none of the fish mentioned were catfish. What I can say was I again heard a great presentation and learned a lot.
Hans, among others, will be speaking at the bi-annual All-Aquarium Catfish Convention in October in Herndon, Virginia. People from all over the world come for this- Jools of PlanetCat tries to make it as well as a number of other folks from across the pond. Ian Fuller (from the UK) will be a speaker- he has spawned 111 species of cory to date, among other things. Many of the most successful catfish breeders in America also attend.
If you can make it or want more info you can check it out here http
/catfishcon.com/
Firstly, he is a great speaker, both entertaining and informative. For the most part we get our information from folks who have never been in a wild habitat, nor collected or studied the fish in the wild. So being able to hear from, an afterward talk with somebody who has made it a very exciting evening for me.
One of the things that really impressed me was when he talked about the collection of zebras. He has actualy gone out with the locals who invited him to try his hand. here is my best recollection of how he described the experience.
Firstly, he explained that zebras live pretty deep, from 5 to 15 meters down (for the Americans here that is 16.4 to 49 feet deep). He also said that the current was unbelievable. Hans has had lots of scuba diving experience, but the locals do not have this gear. They use a compressor in the boat attached to long air lines. the divers use rocks as weights to get down to where the fish are. Because they are so deep it is virtually pitch black down there. So one sees almost nothing and everything is done by feel. The way they collect is the feel for "cavelike" spots and either reach in or overturn rocks and feel for the fish and catch them by hand. Hans said he could barely stay in place holding on with both hands for dear life and wished he had a third arm. But the divers are collecting by feel using one hand while using the other to hold on.
Because only the males cave, males are mostly what they catch this way which explains why females are much harder to get. Hans said even as an experienced diver he had never been down in such a strong current. He said he was so scared he needed to change his pants (I toned that down from how he phrased it). He noted the collecting process was extremely dangerous and that deaths among the divers were common. His guides were pointing to spots and telling him that here this one's son died last year or over there that a diver had drowned a few years before.
Despite the high prices paid for these fish once they reach their final destination, the divers received very little money for their effort. So the next time you buy a wild caught zebra pleco, bear in mind somebody may actually have died trying to make that possible.
Hans also discussed the fate of the river and its inhabitants as well as the indigenous people as a result of the Belo Monte dam. This is another subject on which I have strong opinions. Hans felt folks should not buy fish not on the IBAMA approved list such as zebras. My view is the opposite. We both agreed that zebras, and many other fish, will become extinct very soon. This is why I believe that every zebra that can be taken out is one that can't be killed by the dam project.
Hans also showed photos of his and a few other folks setups for breeding. He related that he had seen one zebra breeding setup in Indonesia (or perhaps one or the other Asian countries- forgive my old brain) where the person was producing a few 100 zebra fry regularly every month. But he has about 300 adult breeders to do this. This is one reason Hans is against the taking of wild fish, he feels there are now enough folks around the world spawning these fish to insure their survival as a species.
He also had a lot of great pictures he had taken of a variety of plecos and a few other fish from the Xingu as well as photos showing what the river looked like. There were also pictures of the local areas. He explained that at the height of the ornamental fish business before IBAMA instituted the export bans that in Altamira, a city along the Xingu at the head of the big bend, the city population had swelled from about 10,000 to double that. It was all due to people working in the collection and exportation of tropical ornamental fish which in the 1980s was an exploding business. In those days you could buy almost anything and new fish were showing up all the time. The people in the fish business used to live by gold mining or burning rain forest and causing all kinds of pollution in the river. Once they got involved with the fish trade they began to understand that the river, and it fish, were making them all a decent living and became concerned with its health and preservation. Since the bans the trade has died and the people have been forced back to gold mining and burning the rain forest to make farmland and of course doing the same harm this always does. It is very depressing. Hans also noticed that since the ban most of the exporters had been forced out of the trade and that the odds were most of them would never return even if the bans were most taken off. They all lost too much to want to risk it again.
One of the best parts of my evening was being able to chat with Hans and a few other folks afterward. And trust me when I say I picked his brain just a bit
I was so impressed that the next day when I returned to attend a workshop on how to photograph fish and tanks that I attended his second presentation on Fishes of the Sulawesi. I have never kept any of these fish and didn't really know where Sulawesi was until then- 'Sulawesi is one of the four larger Sunda Islands of Indonesia and is situated between Borneo and the Maluku Islands" (thank you wikipedia). I will not bore you with the details since none of the fish mentioned were catfish. What I can say was I again heard a great presentation and learned a lot.Hans, among others, will be speaking at the bi-annual All-Aquarium Catfish Convention in October in Herndon, Virginia. People from all over the world come for this- Jools of PlanetCat tries to make it as well as a number of other folks from across the pond. Ian Fuller (from the UK) will be a speaker- he has spawned 111 species of cory to date, among other things. Many of the most successful catfish breeders in America also attend.
If you can make it or want more info you can check it out here http
/catfishcon.com/
Let's hope I can get my zebra plecos to breed one day to ensure the survival of this beautiful species!
