Aquarist FAQ

Written by Derek Wheaton/Enchanting Ectotherms, our resident fish keeper and expert naturalist. He is also on the board for the North American Native Fish Association and the East Tennessee Aquatic Association.

Why can’t we provide fish for the public?/Can private hobbyists breed these fish to help?

We get asked this question all the time, for understandable reasons. We have the privilege to work with some of the most fascinating (and sometimes beautiful) freshwater fish on the continent. Believe us, we’d love to be able to recruit direct help from the public to work towards breeding and maintaining some of these species in captivity, but it’s impossible for a number of reasons.

• Permitting

  Unfortunately, by the time a species is in need of our help at Conservation Fisheries, it’s almost always already protected by either state or federal regulations, and often both. This means that a private individual cannot legally keep or breed these species without permits from applicable state and/or federal agencies. These permits are rarely given to private individuals and are generally restricted to accredited research institutions or conservation nonprofit organizations like Conservation Fisheries. There is a lot of groundwork that has to be done before we can bring in a new species, including applying for and/or renewing these permits, which also set limits on how many wild fish or eggs we are allowed to bring into our facility.

• Rarity

  Again,  even if it were legal, by the time these fish need our help, they’re already in dire straits and should not be removed from the wild except under very specific and well-researched circumstances. Formal population status assessments, genetic research to determine the effective population size and variability, studies to determine whether appropriate habitat exists to restore them are just a few hurdles that need to be cleared before captive propagation programs are implemented. By the time a fish is rare or in need of propagation, it would negatively impact the species to have anyone  targeting them for collection, potentially removing what few individuals remain and their valuable genetic variation crucial for the long-term survival of the species or population.

• Difficulty

  There are some folks who keep and breed native species in captivity. Many North American species are similar or only slightly more involved to maintain in captivity than their tropical counterparts. With the exception of some southern species that live in or near more subtropical climates, most of these fish need seasonal temperature variation that’s very difficult to attain in most captive settings. In order to successfully breed most of these fish, a cold wintertime period with a short photoperiod is required, followed by gradually warming temperatures and a lengthening day in order to bring them into spawning condition. Simply put, most private aquarists cannot maintain fish at 40 degrees for several months and then gradually warm them to their required spawning temperature. Dedicated fish keepers with expensive chillers or outbuildings dedicated to their fish may be able to attain this, but it’s not in the realm of the typical aquarist. 

In addition, most of these species are rare for a reason. They’re either immensely picky about water chemistry, are very territorial when spawning and have low productivity or fertilization rates, their fry are tiny and require specific conditions and food to thrive, or any number of other factors (some of which even we struggle to understand). Not to say that we know everything or are infallible, but sometimes even we feel out of our depth trying to breed some of these fish, so they’re probably not projects that most folks should attempt to take on, even if it is a situation where it may be legal or ethical to attempt. That being said, most of what we know stems from methods developed in the aquarium hobby or in aquaculture to breed other fish species. Some of us have maintained and bred other more common native fish species in our private lives, and some of our projects rely on us using a more common “surrogate species” to refine our methods. We in no way discourage the legal/ethical pursuit of keeping and breeding fish and if you happen to make a breakthrough of some kind that may be relevant to our work, we’d LOVE to hear about it!

How you can help:

Donate! But in all seriousness, we love to show people how cool these fish are and we love that people are wondering how they can put their talents to work to help conserve native fish! As mentioned above, legally keeping more common native fish species and working out methods to effectively maintain and breed them would put you in a very small group of people that work towards understanding our amazing native fish. 

Many species of fish have never had formal life history studies done, so some of them have key knowledge missing, which anyone may be able to help with. For some fish, we don’t know what their preferred spawning temperature is, how long the eggs take to hatch, how large the eggs are, what they can eat when they hatch, how much flow they like, what kind of substrate they spawn on, etc. These are all crucial pieces of information that can be learned by aquarium spawning or perhaps even wild observation. 

If you learn something new, document it and share that information. If you breed fish and find a novel way of doing something that results in better outcomes, healthier fish, or less work, share that method. Join an aquarium club, spread good information around, and help advance techniques for everyone. BAP programs (Breeder’s Award Programs) are prevalent in many or most aquarium club organizations and encourage people to develop methods to breed as many different species as possible. Participating in programs like this makes people better fish keepers and also pushes boundaries and techniques. Participate in such programs and share your discoveries. 

Beyond native species, if you are an aquarist and want to help conservation in other ways, the C.A.R.E.S Preservation Program (Conservation, Awareness, Recognition and Responsibility, Encouragement and Education, and Support and Sharing) exists with the purpose of encouraging people to recognize that many tropical/exotic mainstays of the aquarium hobby are threatened in the wild, and to encourage people to maintain captive stocks of them to share with other aquarists, both as a way to maintain a healthy captive population, as well as to spread awareness about fish conservation. 

For specific groups of fish, the American Killifish Association, American Livebearer Association, and American Cichlid Association (AKA, ALA, ACA) are a few examples that all encourage captive breeding of rare species for preservation purposes, and these organizations use some of the revenue from their dues to fund conservation programs abroad. The Goodeid Working Group specifically works with the Goodeidae family of livebearing fish endemic to Mexico, and not only has this group (along with the ALA) maintained captive populations of species extinct in the wild, but may also be the first to have successfully used hobbyist-bred fish to pilot a conservation program in which an extinct species was successfully reestablished into the wild. One of our biologists, Jackson Booth, is even one of the founding members of the Fundulid Working Group, a similar, related organization that will be moving forward to help conserve both captive and wild populations of North American killifish in the family Fundulidae. NANFA, the North American Native Fishes Association is a wonderful group to join, supports native fish keeping and conservation, has one of our biologists, Derek Wheaton (who wrote this post!), on the board of directors, and he proudly credits the organization with spurring him to go down the career path that led him to Conservation Fisheries. There’s a ton that you can do to work towards better fish conservation, even without keeping any of the fish we work with.

So, we’re sorry we can’t sell you a Candy Darter or offer to give you a group of Blackside Dace to try breeding at home, but for many reasons, it’s just not possible/legal/ethical, and it’s not what we do. But we are an organization of folks passionate about fish, founded in the back of a fish store and largely staffed by people that caught the “bug” by keeping aquariums at home. So we get it and we appreciate your support. If you keep fish, stay tuned, have fun, and let us know if you make any cool discoveries.