the "lost fish"

[Taratron]

Is there anyone who is keeping tabs on fish that were once very common in the hobby, but are now extinct in the wild, or very hard to come by, either from overfishing, habitat destruction, etc? Is there a major list somewhere I could glean over as to fish that are becoming avaliable only in images in books?

[Mike_Noren]

Is there anyone who is keeping tabs on fish that were once very common in the hobby, but are now extinct in the wild, or very hard to come by, either from overfishing, habitat destruction, etc? Is there a major list somewhere I could glean over as to fish that are becoming avaliable only in images in books?

Offhand the only examples I can think of are Blue Eyed Panaque and a couple of Victoria Cichlids. There's probably more, but most of the popular species which have gone extinct in the wild (e.g. Redtail Sharkminnow, Dwarf Loach) or become rare (e.g. Red Rainbow, Butterfly Goodeid) are still available in quantity because they're being bred in captivity.

[MatsP]

I'm pretty sure blue-eyed panaque are not extinct, just from an area that is pretty much controlled by FARQ or some other militant group on the border of Colombia and Venezuela.

--
Mats

[Mike_Noren]

I'm pretty sure blue-eyed panaque are not extinct

It is, however, hard to come by, partly because the original capture localities were destroyed by pollution.

[OldMan]

A simple place to start looking is the whole goodeid group. Several of them are extinct in the wild or threatened. They are delightful fish that I like to keep in my tanks and they breed readily. They are extinct or threatened mostly because they come from areas that are a bit short on water and the rivers and lakes are being used to irrigate farm fields. My prolific Ameca splendens are extinct in the wild but, unless HR669 goes through, they are secure in the hobbyists tanks. Almost any club auction seems to have some available for those who are interested. My Xenotoca eiseni are not yet extinct in the wild but are threatened as are the Xenotaenia resolanae. Both fish are fun and easy to propagate but again, they are facing habitat destruction. Within the goodeid group, the Skiffia are particularly threatened and are not quite as easy for a hobbyist to maintain. This year the ALA is going to auction some Skiffia francesae that are extinct in the wild and darned near extinct in the hobby. There are probably less than a few hundred being kept world wide, but the SMP is trying to keep them going. It seems that they don't do very well in a tank but have no other place to live right now.

[sidguppy]

once common, now very rare:

most Victorian cichlids fit that bill, ditto

Synodontis afrofischeri

what's left of the Vics in captivity is highly inbred and hybridized,.....there are a few very dedicated groups of people who try to save them, but what you see in the trade is finned garbage.

another group wich falls in this category are the riverine Synodontis not eupterus.
here they are all displaced by hybrids, one of the reasons I'm so hellbent on the evil bastards creating those and killing part of our hobby.
try to get -for example- a Synodontis flavitaeniatus within the borders of the Netherlands.
just forget it.

Goodeids suffer the same fate as Vics. apart from a few dedicated fishkeepers who are working with increasingly smaller genepools, those are rare as hens' teeth.

Pimelodella species! those were quite common in the 80's in our trade and I cannot remember seeing a live one since 1989....
why that is, I have no idea. they just aren't there.
pictus yes, with some searching blochiior albomaculatus, but no Pimelodella's anywhere.
and they were common enough to be cheap. cheap enough for me to buy when I was 14 or so.

rare and endangered or extinct:
Madagascar fish. name anyone......
very very hard to come by outside of the US, save for some strains of Paratilapia and the occasional Ptychochromis oligacanthus Nosy Be.
fish like Paretroplus nourissati, P kieneri, P tsimoly, P menarambo, Katria katria etc are very hard to get outside the US
fish like the non cichlids didn't even made the trade (apart from a single Bedotia species). shame, really.
soon they will all be gone, and given the way politics are now in Madagascar there's not a damn thing any of us can do about it.

once fairly common, and now rare in the trade: Mouthbrooding Betta species.
another group of fish you don't see often anymore and once they were dirtcheap.

ditto non Synodontis non Rift African catfishes. very hard to find those.
even an old stalwart like Anaspidoglanis macrostoma is quite hard to find.

[MatsP]

another group wich falls in this category are the riverine Synodontis not eupterus.
here they are all displaced by hybrids, one of the reasons I'm so hellbent on the evil bastards creating those and killing part of our hobby.
try to get -for example- a

Synodontis flavitaeniata

within the borders of the Netherlands.
just forget it.
[snip]
even an old stalwart like

Anaspidoglanis macrostoma

is quite hard to find.

I happen to have both of these! The latter, I unfortunately had an accident with one of the two - when replacing my tanks, something [I can't quite remember what] fell down into the tub which I kept the fishes in for temporary housing, and when I came to move the fish into their new home, one of my A. macrostoma was squashed - did I kick myself?

They weren't very expensive either.

--
Mats

[Silurus]

ditto non Synodontis non Rift African catfishes. very hard to find those.
even an old stalwart like Anaspidoglanis macrostoma is quite hard to find.

That would depend on where you live. When I was in the US, these weren't that hard to find (just a problem of demand I guess, as my source said that these weren't exactly selling like hot cakes). Back in Singapore, it's just about impossible to find any African cats that are not commercially bred (although I did purchase some Bagrus from an LFS here years ago that I kept until I had to leave for the US).

[Silurus]

Bala sharks (Balantiocheilos melanopterus) are still common in the hobby, so they probably do not qualify very well. All commercial stock is now farm bred (although I suspect that years ago, aquarium stock might have been wild-caught), and the species is undergoing very severe decline in the wild (for reasons unknown). I would have said that this species is extinct in the wild, if not for the fact that I encountered wild specimens of this fish during a recent trip to Sumatra. Still, wild bala sharks are as rare as hens' teeth throughout their natural range.

The Indochinese species I helped describe (Balantiocheilos ambusticauda) is extinct. Period.

[Mike_Noren]

It occurs to me that many of the once-common now-rare in the hobby species have probably become rare because they were either not as attractive as some similar species, or not very suitable as aquarium fish: Paradise Fish, Stickleback, the original Jewel Cichlid (Hemichromis bimaculatus), Buenos Aires Tetra, Exodon paradoxus...

However, I did remember one more which probably have become rare in the hobby due to becoming rare in nature: Clown Rasbora (Rasbora kalochroma). It has never been bred in captivity (so no captive breeding to offset dwindling wild stock as for Bala Shark and Cherry Barb), I don't think I've seen it for sale for a good ten years, and it's guaranteed to have been hit hard by deforestation and habitat destruction in South East Asia.

[Silurus]

Rasbora kalochroma are not that rare in the wild (although blackwater habitats in SEA are disappearing quite fast, they are about as common as say, chocolate gouramies, in such habitats). For some strange reason, demand for this fish seems to have dropped and I don't see them as often at transshippers here (they seem quite common at the export end).