# Demise Of A Tanganyika Cichlid - Tanzania Murago Tropheus



## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

An article by Ad Konings worth reading for everybody in the fish hobby:

http://www.cichlidae.com/section.php?id=279


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## Deeda (Oct 12, 2012)

Good article, wonderful film footage!! It's a shame that unscrupulous collectors are still a problem and some aquarists are demanding that wild caught and/or sensitive species are a trophy worth losing in the wild.


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## Razzo (Oct 17, 2007)

Thank you Frank - I will share in my circles.


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## fmueller (Jan 11, 2004)

At least for freshwater fish, overfishing from unscrupulous collectors and too high of a demand for wild caught fish have not been a problem - with very few exceptions. More commonly people in the hobby were able to preserve fish in a captive environment that were threatened or extinct in the wild due to pressures on their natural habitat. That's our saving grace when policy makers demand stricter import regulations. We don't want to loose our good standing!


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## chopsteeks (Jul 23, 2013)

Thanks for sharing.

Recently purchased a colony of F?? Tropheus, glad we did this.


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## BillD (May 17, 2005)

A sad story. Of course every case of wild caught fish is different. It would seem the recently discovered galaxy rasbora has been fished out of it's natural habitat. Conversely, wild caught fish can provide income to locals giving them a vested interest in protecting the local environment. An example of this would be the cardinal tetra. A number of years ago I saw or read about the harvest of these fish in the wild. Fisherman were getting a couple of dollars per thousand. The annual catch was around 84 million per year. This number was sustainable apparently. By providing income for the locals, the rainforest wasn't being razed to farm, which is a losing proposition in the nutrient poor rain forest. There is virtually no soil and farming is at best a one shot deal. So, in this case having commercial breeders take over the market to "save" the species with captive bred fish,would be a bad thing.


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## Cich-ness (Apr 2, 2014)

Shameful and greedy, exploiting such a small population for personal gain, aquaculture is a sad place for an entire variant to reside, and hardly a consolation.


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