I had just seen this old response and wanted to respond... Was cruising all of my old threads.
Most of it is old news, so let me just respond to your questions/sentiments.
Pictures: I indeed have been posting pictures. The photos include a bucket of 15 or 20 freshly-arrived lungfish, 4 others that had just arrived, in their bags, my shortbody annectens, my monster annectens, my albino dolloi, and my albino aethiopicus. They are just scattered in the lungfish forum and photo gallery, not in one place. And then there are the others that don't yet have photos.
perhaps get them into one place so everyone can see them. also, are you starting a business now? i recall you were selling some of your lungfish off...nothing necessarily wrong with selling your fish, but why dwindle down "the largest lungfish collection in the entire world"? you are perhaps finding that taking on that many specimens as a college student may be a bit more than one could chew?
1. If you feel that somebody has another large collection, I'd love to know about it. I've been trying, with no luck whatsoever, to find such, on, and OFF of MFK. I am sure that if somebody was farming them, or breeding them (Protopterus, anyway) there would be at least some mention of it elsewhere on the world wide web. It would be wonderful to share information with that person.
again, people were fishing, working with lungfish long before the web, and definitely long before MFK...or any other fish site for that matter. scour what you can on the internet, but believe it or not, not ALL the information in the world is available online. hence we still have hard copy sources of data, such as journals, etc...speaking of which...
2. The reason we don't see conservation efforts for goldfish or Asian carp is..... hey are... invasive, and they procreate like there's no tomorrow. The reason is, they hardly need any help at all. All species of lungfish are very difficult, or impossible to spawn in captivity. There is not one mention (that I've found online) of a successful breeding of any Protopterus, outside of a huge pond.
you assume i was talking about goldfish or Asian carp here in the US. trust me, i'm quite familiar with invasive species and their impacts on the ecosystems. in Asia, several species of carp are aquacultured, as are goldfish. snakeheads and walking catfishes are also aquacultured. i was just giving you an example of a fish that doesn't necessarily need conservation efforts. there is nothing wrong with wanting to spawn a fish, but if i were going to make efforts into conservation with lungfishes, you may want to research more thoroughly...yes, looking at more common species is worth doing to learn their breeding/spawning behavior, but efforts should then be transferred to the species that actually need the conservation more.
3. I have actually read a few short excerpts about Africa's dwindling water quality and water supply, and reference was made to this potentially becoming cause for concern for Protopterids. Overall, Africa's environments are not very healthy, and are not getting better, thanks partly due to the governments throughout most of Africa. Furthermore, let's just put aside the whole conservation effort for a moment and consider the fact that these fish have not been bred before in aquaria. Now that is what I call a major challenge, one which I have decided to take upon myself. In addition, it is generally much better to buy a captive bred fish (animal) than a wild collected one for many reasons. My desire to create a captive breeding program is not necessarily a direct result of their needing help, but more so a result of my wanting a challenge, and the fact that I already am passionate about these guys, and also the fact that in the near future their supposedly stable wild populations could be under stress, if not already.
a few short excerpts? where are these excerpts you are referring to? do you mean abstracts? there are a lot of very general comments you are throwing out there. yes, several of Africa's ecosystems are in trouble, but so are many other places on the planet. where there may be issues with nile perch cascading down to affect even lungfishes in lake victoria, there are other lakes in Africa where P. aethiopicus has actually been established and could be considered a viable fishery (albeit smaller specimens than Victoria, they do spawn year round). there are more examples of this sort of scenario out there.
There is, as you say, much yet to learn about these awesome fish. What better way to do that, than ... doing what I am? I don't see anyone doing any field research on them. (Wonder why?)
Hope this answers some of your questions/thoughts. Cheers, Jude
and yes, that does answer some questions, or at least responds to some comments. but let's face it, no one wants to continuously hear about 'the largest lungfish collection' when there is really no way to verify that right now, and on top of that it seems quite unlikely. keep working at your project and interests, but stick to the facts and your experiences...not numbers of lungfishes kept--
--solomon
No, really, it was kind of a relief - No major overwhelm, just a minor one 
