I have been reading back posts and finding a lot of use full information- thanks MFK community! One of the subjects that I see coming up from time to time is breeding lungfish. I am no expert and a total n00b around here, still asking stupid questions and figuring things out. My annectens is my only monster fish and other than it I have killi fish. So a monster fish expert I am not. I have been keeping reptiles for many years (20+) and although not the same hobby I think some parallels can be drawn.
Captive breeding of any animal is a worthy goal in my mind, especially rare threatened or poorly understood species. I my self have bred several species of reptile and fish and found it quite rewarding. Breeding lungfish would have some serious hurdles to cross and at the moment would seem pretty far-fetched out side of the world of large-scale aquaculture. This has been the consensus with many reptiles as well. The thing that I have seen over the years is that the tricks are discovered and the requirements to breed certain animals demystified. What happens next ---can be sad and ultimately disastrous to the hobby in general.
Take the Burmese python for an example, the snake gets huge, can become very tame and with proper husbandry is relatively easy to breed. What has happened is that there are many more Burmese pythons bred in the United States as well as being imported, than there are qualified keepers. So what happens to all the extra snakes? Many live miserable lives, many die, many wind up being dumped in inappropriate places, dropped off at shelters, picked up by rescues. Some even hurt their keepers. As a result many localities have banned the keeping of large snakes for any one but zoos and aquariums and a few have gone so far as to ban reptile keeping in general.
I know this is a lungfish forum and I have just gone on and on about snakes, but is it so hard to see that a few lung fish showing up in lakes here and there or an unsupervised youngster having a finger removed by moms lungfish could have disastrous affects on our hobby. The powers that be generally deal with incidents like this by banning ownership of the animal or group of animals. Lungfish keeping is still in its infancy and I for one am excited to see how things unfold in the future. I actually hope some effort is made to breed these fish in captivity. At least by aquaculture farms in Africa or Asia if not by hobbyists. These efforts would undoubtedly increase the body of existing knowledge pertaining to these fish, and hopefully reduce pressure on wild populations. I just hope that we can temper our enthusiasm for doing something new and unique with sensibility about to what end we are doing said things.
Dan
Captive breeding of any animal is a worthy goal in my mind, especially rare threatened or poorly understood species. I my self have bred several species of reptile and fish and found it quite rewarding. Breeding lungfish would have some serious hurdles to cross and at the moment would seem pretty far-fetched out side of the world of large-scale aquaculture. This has been the consensus with many reptiles as well. The thing that I have seen over the years is that the tricks are discovered and the requirements to breed certain animals demystified. What happens next ---can be sad and ultimately disastrous to the hobby in general.
Take the Burmese python for an example, the snake gets huge, can become very tame and with proper husbandry is relatively easy to breed. What has happened is that there are many more Burmese pythons bred in the United States as well as being imported, than there are qualified keepers. So what happens to all the extra snakes? Many live miserable lives, many die, many wind up being dumped in inappropriate places, dropped off at shelters, picked up by rescues. Some even hurt their keepers. As a result many localities have banned the keeping of large snakes for any one but zoos and aquariums and a few have gone so far as to ban reptile keeping in general.
I know this is a lungfish forum and I have just gone on and on about snakes, but is it so hard to see that a few lung fish showing up in lakes here and there or an unsupervised youngster having a finger removed by moms lungfish could have disastrous affects on our hobby. The powers that be generally deal with incidents like this by banning ownership of the animal or group of animals. Lungfish keeping is still in its infancy and I for one am excited to see how things unfold in the future. I actually hope some effort is made to breed these fish in captivity. At least by aquaculture farms in Africa or Asia if not by hobbyists. These efforts would undoubtedly increase the body of existing knowledge pertaining to these fish, and hopefully reduce pressure on wild populations. I just hope that we can temper our enthusiasm for doing something new and unique with sensibility about to what end we are doing said things.
Dan
