PlanetCatfish.com

Is there any truth in the rumour that they are now extinct in the wild due to the environmental destruction of their breeding grounds?

No idea... I suppose that depends on what species you mean by blue eyed panaque... As far as i can understand, the species in Colombia has been extinct from one river, but still survives in an area under control by the FARC gureilla, while for the species in the Maracaibo basin, It's "business as usual"...

If you haven't read the last threads about it, you should do a search through the forums.

Hi,
as far as I know, the Blue Eye panaque lives only in the river system of the Rio Magdalena, his true name is Panaque cochliodon Steindachner, and not Panaque suttonorum ("suttoni") Schlúltz.
From Maracaibo should come the Panaque suttonorum, what has not been exported yet.

The Blueeye does exist yet, but cannot or only rarly be exportet, as König Löwe said, because of the civil war and the Guerillas.
The rare fishes, that are exported, are often ill and die soon. The reason for the actually mostly sick exported fish is, that in former times the fish were transported by a bus to the exporteur and the airport, this was fast and they stayed healthy. Because of the guerillas this bus line does not go any more, so the fish are transportet by ship. This lasts much longer, and the fish are not fed during this time and there is no water change, so the Blueeyes often get seriously ill.

you can still find some out of south america every so often, never have I seen wilds, but I have seen, and was disappointed not to get, some pond raised ones.

http://www.forum.planetcatfish.com/view ... t=blue+eye

Jools

Thanks Jools, kind of worrying that our hooby is helping to wipe out certain species of fish in the wild.
Maybe it is time we did something about it.

I think any damage done by the South American ornamental fish trade is somewhat insignificant in comparison to activities like open cast mining, river dredge mining and deforestation. Stop or limit those activites and you will save a whole lot more fish than you would going after native fish collectors.

Have a word with Dinyar and Pete on this, they are also greatly concerned by conservation.

Jools

And on top of that we have Sugar cane production and oil exploration that poisons the water ways, good old Human beings, the plague of the planet.

Yes, we all have to stop drinking rum! Seriously though, when in Venezuela Shane pointed out to me huge tracts of land that were producing sugar cane. Aside from the one-off habitat destruction, this takes a great deal of annual irrigation. There were all sorts of fish in the rivers that were once there, at best they are now restricted to higher elevations in the same drainage system.

Jools

I have seen photographs of the outfall from the Sugar cane processing plants, nothing lives in the water for hundreds of yards, in some places this can stretch to miles of water completely deviod of life.
"Sugar in your Coffee Sir?, one dead environment or two?"