I only recently found out about the CARES fish preservation program. The basic idea is that it’s a group interested in getting responsible fishie-people to help ensure the survival of certain fish species.

I mentioned this to a friend at work who seemed skeptical. “Wouldn’t it just be better if people left them alone in the wild?” Well, yes and no, depending upon the circumstances. The easiest example to take is that of the African rift lake cichlids. These fish are found often only within a single lake in the wild.

In the case of Lake Victoria, one of the 3 lakes, many of the fish are either very endangered or already extinct. This is not due to people taking fish from the wild for the aquarium hobby. Instead it is due to the introduction of non-native fish species into the lake, the Nile Perch. The non-native species did not have much effect for about 20-30 years, but sometime in the late 20th century the non-native species began to dramatically out compete many of the native fish. Since these fish are only found within a single lake (albiet a very large one), that’s all it took. If I’m recalling correctly, the loss of various fish species from Lake Victoria is around 250-300 distinct species during the past 3 decades. That’s about half of all the fish species in that lake. However, some of the species managed to find suitable new homes in aquariums throughout the world. It’s because of this that some people in the aquarium hobby now have fish that are in fact extinct in nature. There are many other species that are critically endangered in the lake and, sadly, will probably only be found in captivity soon.

Because the entire ecosystem of the lake has changed, it is not a matter of simply putting these fish back into the lake. In fact, I’m not really aware of any great solution that will work in the long run. However, at least for now aquariums, zoos, and even hobbiests can help to keep the species alive.

As such we’ve decided to keep a couple of fish colonies that will be dedicated to endangered fish. We have 2 different groups in 2 of our tanks. 1 group is from Lake Victoria itself and is the Haplochromis obliquidens. So far we only have 4 of them, 1 male a 3 females. However, the male is very colorful and bossy. We expect a female to be holding soon. We’ve also go a tank setup around Tropheus duboisi Maswa with 19 of the little guys in it. Right now they’re all too young to really breed. But we’ve obtained them from 3 different sources to help keep them diverse and are optimistic.

I should try to post pictures soon.