Man! I leave for a few days and look what happens - like leaving teenagers home alone.
As the OP of this thread I feel some responsibility to try and keep it on topic and civil. Like Rodney King said - Can't we all just get along? Seriously, there's nothing productive about being accusatory or "fishier than thou". I hope we can keep focused on sharing useful information about a fascinating species. Please.
Re: "genetic dwarfs" - having raised several thousand tilapia and other species, and visited numerous commercial fish hatcheries, it is not uncommon to see individuals from the same gene pool, living under the same conditions which, for whatever reason, stay smaller than their cohorts. Now whether this is true dwarfism is debatable. It could be due to any number of things including disease, deformity, injury, chemical exposure, etc. Probably the only way to know is to selectively breed those "dinks", a serious commitment with paddlefish, or at the least try and maintain them over time as Moontanman is doing. If and when those dinks die of unknown causes, autopsy and pathology reports would be useful to determine if there was some underlying disease or deformity causing slow growth. If that could be ruled out then dwarfism would be more likely. Of course commercial hatcheries have no interest in such things. They want fast growing fish which mature early and get large. Dinks would be culled, which is probably why Moontanman was able to get his in the first place. Selecting for small size/slow growth is a legitimate approach, IMO, but it will be up to us, the hobbyists, to make that happen.
I support Moontanman's efforts and I think he has added a lot to the paddlefish conversation, as has jbiji. They have different approaches but it sounds like both are trying to provide appropriate housing and responsible care and I'm grateful both are willing to share their experiences.
As has been said, this is not a fish for everyone and it behooves anyone seriously considering keeping paddlefish (or any other fish for that matter) to learn as much as possible before acquiring one. My thanks to those willing to share - in spite of occasional flames.
As the OP of this thread I feel some responsibility to try and keep it on topic and civil. Like Rodney King said - Can't we all just get along? Seriously, there's nothing productive about being accusatory or "fishier than thou". I hope we can keep focused on sharing useful information about a fascinating species. Please.
Re: "genetic dwarfs" - having raised several thousand tilapia and other species, and visited numerous commercial fish hatcheries, it is not uncommon to see individuals from the same gene pool, living under the same conditions which, for whatever reason, stay smaller than their cohorts. Now whether this is true dwarfism is debatable. It could be due to any number of things including disease, deformity, injury, chemical exposure, etc. Probably the only way to know is to selectively breed those "dinks", a serious commitment with paddlefish, or at the least try and maintain them over time as Moontanman is doing. If and when those dinks die of unknown causes, autopsy and pathology reports would be useful to determine if there was some underlying disease or deformity causing slow growth. If that could be ruled out then dwarfism would be more likely. Of course commercial hatcheries have no interest in such things. They want fast growing fish which mature early and get large. Dinks would be culled, which is probably why Moontanman was able to get his in the first place. Selecting for small size/slow growth is a legitimate approach, IMO, but it will be up to us, the hobbyists, to make that happen.
I support Moontanman's efforts and I think he has added a lot to the paddlefish conversation, as has jbiji. They have different approaches but it sounds like both are trying to provide appropriate housing and responsible care and I'm grateful both are willing to share their experiences.
As has been said, this is not a fish for everyone and it behooves anyone seriously considering keeping paddlefish (or any other fish for that matter) to learn as much as possible before acquiring one. My thanks to those willing to share - in spite of occasional flames.
