1st hand experience vs Care sheets
- Thread starter jaws7777
- Start date
A general care sheet is fine for first time gold fish keepers. or maybe some guppies or neon tetras. A well established reputable fish board is the #1 best place to get good advice. Even for the above mentioned. Ask a question here and you well get long time keepers advice. And when one of us get it wrong (me?) there folks here to set me straight, teach me something more and get good info to the OP.
Let me chime in on this, most of this care sheet only talks about wild specimen that they caught and take care of or did a study on and that was back who know how many years ago. Do this people ever updated a care sheet? Most fish that we get at our LFS nowadays a breed in captivity, alot of fish are being inbreed so growth,lifespan and genes decrease.
So you prove my point. The Internet care sheets did not give you sufficient information. You had to "dig"
We have a member with polys in the double digits (age) i think one lasted 15 yrs. I'd call anyone that can keep fish alive that long is pretty damn close to being an expert at least in how to properly care for the fish.
Your stuck on the size of sen's... thats the tip of the ice berg. They got the size of teugs wrong...only in the wrong direction...16 inches max size. According to that site endlicheri grow larger than bichir bichir. Not updating the site to reflect congicus is a separate species is pretty bad.
Habitat/catch locations are vague, food requirements are inaccurate as well. Even DW can be a no no depending on what species is being kept.
Those care sheets have little to no value
Good point about captive breeding. The size issues are one thing but almost every bullet point in those links has inaccurate info. Things like polypterus not accepting dry foods (pellets) is flat out nonsense
I picked that one because that's the one you started finger pointing at.
I just wanted to see where they get their info from for myself. I am personally satisfied with the finding and I don't care whose point I prove as long as the information can be verified.
I personally value the experience of others, but when that information is first hand source, not a word of mouth as it normally happens. Too much wrong info has been sang as gospel over the years and some people do things just because others do them that way, not for any other good reason, thus contributing little to the group experience.
Also,the nature of human beings is to blindly follow others without questioning. People like to belong to the group, no matter what. There are very interesting studies done on that by the way....shocking stuff...
The TV and media in my opinion are a great example of how repetition of information becomes common knowledge, to the point that the people passing it on start believing that it is their own opinion.
If people were thinking for themselves all the time, there wouldn't have been World Wars 1 and 2 because who in their right mind sets out on a mission to kill others....But see, it's ok to kill when everyone else is doing it....You're not a killer but a hero, because everyone else thinks so...
End of rant
Ain't it the truth. There are enough things I've been told about fish, only to learn otherwise over time, sometimes opposite what I was told.
Besides sample size, the other thing about experience is interpretation. Some notions get started when people with only part of the picture, limited experience, or no inkling of the science don't understand what they're seeing and come to faulty conclusions. When you consider how even biologists keep revising things with new information, that's all of us at some level. We can also misinterpret something that works by not understanding why it works, so we invent a rule that's not really a rule. There's also interpretive bias, including knowledgeable people who tend to see things only a certain way.
That said, there are people I respect for knowing what they're talking about in one or more areas and I'd take their word in those areas, at least as a starting point until I learn more or come to differing conclusions from personal experience.
Whoever said above that we're all learning, so keep an open mind-- I agree with that.
C
Coryloach
..... I'm not arguing about a jug, or someone else's loach (I wasn't there) I am stating that I have personally seen 3 adult clown loaches that were in the 14" range. The owner said 15", so let's say 14-15". The difference between you and I is I saw them, so close I could touch all 3 fish. Not saying that size is common, not even suggesting that they grow to that size in the wild, I am simply saying that clown loaches can definitely exceed 12". FYI..... The owner purchased them at 10" and had them for 15 yrs, so probably 20-25 yrs old when he sold them. They were part of a display tank in a well known Lfs in Calgary AB, so probably thousands of hobbyists saw them over the years. Possibly still growing in someone's tank today. Redshark isn't the only person in fish land that owns loaches that are that old.
Last edited:
Not to single out seriouslyfish again, but
C
Coryloach
, they got some other info incorrect on that same species.
They state on their care sheet: "At one time all traded fish were wild-collected, mostly from Sumatra, but these days the situation is less clear. While many thousands of wild specimens are still caught and sold annually, farmers in Southeast Asia have been artificially breeding the species via the use of hormones for several years."
The last count that I saw posted was approx 50 million (possibly more) being exported annually, and the vast majority of those exported have always come from Indonesia (Kalimantan Provinces) not Sumatra. The reason for that is due to the Kalimantan specimens overall brighter, more colorful markings. This was mentioned several times by an MFK member who lives in Indo, and who worked in the aquatic trade. You can find his comments in my sticky on the two different geographical variants, as well as in the Clown Loach breeding and export study sticky. And while this species has indeed been bred in captivity, even in commercial circles, it is far too time consuming and labour intensive (at least thus far) to supply any real quantity to the trade. Certainly not enough to compete with wild specimens.
This is just a few examples of how incorrect info gets posted on the internet, and people run with it. Thankfully we have sites such as MFK, with members dedicated enough to this hobby to clear up some of the misconceptions and misinformation that has been posted on care sheets etc over the years.
They state on their care sheet: "At one time all traded fish were wild-collected, mostly from Sumatra, but these days the situation is less clear. While many thousands of wild specimens are still caught and sold annually, farmers in Southeast Asia have been artificially breeding the species via the use of hormones for several years."
The last count that I saw posted was approx 50 million (possibly more) being exported annually, and the vast majority of those exported have always come from Indonesia (Kalimantan Provinces) not Sumatra. The reason for that is due to the Kalimantan specimens overall brighter, more colorful markings. This was mentioned several times by an MFK member who lives in Indo, and who worked in the aquatic trade. You can find his comments in my sticky on the two different geographical variants, as well as in the Clown Loach breeding and export study sticky. And while this species has indeed been bred in captivity, even in commercial circles, it is far too time consuming and labour intensive (at least thus far) to supply any real quantity to the trade. Certainly not enough to compete with wild specimens.
This is just a few examples of how incorrect info gets posted on the internet, and people run with it. Thankfully we have sites such as MFK, with members dedicated enough to this hobby to clear up some of the misconceptions and misinformation that has been posted on care sheets etc over the years.
Yes, agree. But you know it is incorrect because you've done your research, not because it was posted on seriously fish specifically.
MFK, like any other internet source, is certainly not immune to providing incorrect info.
The point of all this is that it is best verifying information one is interested in via alternative sources, trying to avoid in the process the internet "zones" subjected to the "echo" effect.
Forums are good because they provide novelty information but the same information can lack verifiable elements one can rely on to believe said info.
The difference between your posts and some other people's posts is that your information is well researched and well explained and is also verifiable. You also provide your sources where applicable.
If everyone was constructing their responses that way, and was doing their own thorough research instead of repeating the same like a soap opera, this would be the only place one would ever need to develop as a responsible and knowledgeable fish keeper. The problem is, forum dialogue on that level tend to be in decline these days.
