Sponsors and minimum standards

It's back, for those that have not been following closely this thread was moved offline yesterday when things got a bit nasty. It has been tidied up now and and replies are welcome provided they relate to fish and are not personal or disrespectful.

Daragh

PS. Because some posts were deleted by admins, some follow up posts were either deleted or slightly amended to make sense and allow the thread to make sense when starting from the beginning, if anyone whos post was edited has a problem with the edit, please PM me.

May I just say thanks cause all of a a sudden the forum is more welcoming again, and i think the section on fish to avoid is a very good idea.

I have been following this Topic as it has progressed with interest. Surely the main reason for he ITFS is to help & assist like minded hobbyist to promote, help & advise when requested on All aspects of the Hobby to the best of there abilty. It is also run by the members & for the members. anyone asking for help & avice are welcome. whether they accept it or ignore it is entirely up to them.
Lets take a broader look at the whole picture, In my younger days I was an active member of Greenpeace. wholeheartedly against Whaling and the culling of seals, then I became interested in CITES of which I am an still an avid supporter, but since the 60's to the present day all these trades still exist. Why ??? because of Public demand.
I posted a topic regarding a certain garden centre. and the response from the owner was that had he have known about the Dyed fish topic he would have changed his views, but as he said it was public demand that promoted the sale.
Also had he have known about the ITFS he would certainly have seeked help and advice!!

Now!! how do you differentiate between reputable Tropical fish Outlets and Garden centers!!

As he stated he did not know of any advice available that could have assisted him. and suggested that if there was information Center offering this service and if he have known about the ITFS that perhaps things would have been different.

We are a Club. Should we get involved with posters in areas that have known outlets, or by publicity via the Media. press & Radio??? or is this a step to far??

I was amazed to overhear from one of our Sponsors when certain members had lost a large portion of there stock due to the latest water pollution in Dublin - That's what I like to hear, more sales for me!!!!. or words to that effect. Was he joking??? or is the trade driven purely by profit & public demand?

On a Personal note.
I believe that all our sponsors and those we promote should sign up to a Code of conduct. and let it be known to the Trade that we will only endorse those that agree.
This topic will run & run unless an agreement is reached.
For those saying it is already in place I dissagree. as they say \"The Proof of the Pudding!!! and all that.

The ITFS does a great job & is self supporting and financed. Are we just a club/society or a Champion of the cause.???????

If you have a problem Then have a go at ME not the Club.
Best regards
Russ

yes there is plenty we can do! but a cavalier big brother attitude will not work, i for one am not prepared to go down that line.

But if we use the web to our advantage we can get our message across in an educational manner. We have all heard the term \"key words\" try a wee google on these words tropical fish, purchasing tropical fish, advice on tropical fish, these few searches point out the importance of key words if we use them we can both educate and destroy the ignorance that leads to these cruel practices but we would need a database of fish with photos, which includes minimum numbers and size of tank and when it comes to tattooed fish an explanation of how this is done. if this information is available a lot more people will not mistakenly kill, mix or buy the wrong fish. Also it would help if for example in \"Beginners Haven\" a sticky with the link to articles \"Starting up & maintaining a stress free aquarium\" was in place.

Thats all very well The point I am making is that unless you know about the ITFS how do you get information. I for one dicoverd it purely by chance.
By promoting the ITFS you inform the people.

I found the site in this way too, as did most people.

Again that is why we have to have key words inserted in appropriate text e.g. down loadable fish care and advice sheet or Ireland's leading tropical/marine/cold water fish site, so that when you put in a search on the web, ITFS will come up straight away.

Cash is never an answer, yes for example if we asked all sponsors to display a sign stating they are proud sponsors of the site it will be a big help. But for every Lfs who would value us there are those who would not want us helping. They make money by selling semi-aquatic plants instead of fully aquatic plants or selling fish and tanks together, knowing the fish will die in a non-cycled tank. And none of us can afford the type of cash needed and there are too many things these days collecting for this and that.

And in all honesty people don't what to know till there is a problem most shops already sell books that explain everything! It is using keywords that will high light Irishfishkeepers.com/itfs

But i will put a small add in my local paper for the site! Who will join me?

And will our sponsors sign up to promotion days jointly hosted by the shops and clubs because were possible I will be there to help out.

If possible could one of admin set up a volunteer group with a sticky how to join and you can write my name down first. This group would help co-ordinate these open days and this group would also be available to lFS for advice or would source it!?1

I for one am totally with you John but small steps are all we can take. Russell made a very valid point to, the terrible slaughter of whales and lets not forget the Dolphin and this fight to stop this has gone on as long as i can remember. but unless we have some high profile person champion this cause, well we can only do so much.

we have limited resources and if it were possible i would be out there collecting the funds to do this but as it has been stated before on some sites, article's etc fish are at the bottom of the league table of peoples concern.

The little we can do is a first step. and every time we do get one person to log for the first time is one step closer to our goals one more person who will have gained a small insight but for example on the home page we should have \"We do not support the cruel practice of tattooing fish\" and we need to help from other sites mags sponsors. A question is it against the law here to give a gold fish as prize in Ireland and if it is how long has it been law? lets just start with small steps.

(sorry about spelling)

i just did a key word search \"tattooed fish\" this is what i found.

clipmarks.com/clipmark/42B8D1AF-BD0F-4927-A740-DF5FB50AE97A/
www.tetra-fish.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2000
www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?art...070926_1__OKLAH63558
au.answers.yahoo.com/answers2/frontend.p...0070914143105AAMXaVT

Your sentiments are precisely in line with what I would love to do to the forum Mickey.I suggested a number of months ago that this forum has a potential which I think not one person realises.We reach hundreds of people each day and can and should be spreading messages and making an impact.

I stated before the forum has a financial webpage look and feel to it.Look at any other fish forum and you instantly know where you are

www.cichlid-forum.com/

http://http://www.malawiforum.co.uk/index.php

www.cichlidae.com/

We are a work in progress and are improving all the time but we need to keep reaching higher.

I have been out of the loop for a couple of days over Christmas and only briefly talked to Anthony. Obviously there was a good bit of editing going on and so I will only refer to what I just read in this thread.
Let's be clear about it. I have never ever suggested that we take a big brother approach. But dyed fish are in my view morally wrong. We should not support any shop that has any on offer. Period. We should not accept sponsorship from anybody who has them for sale. Ok, it might hurt us in the short-term but not as much as it will hurt the shops selling them. Most of us on the forum spend a considerable amount of money on their fish and in the end money talks.
Why are dyed fish still for sale? Demand. Ok let us look at who buys these fish. People who don't know any better and these people will probably never have heard of this forum and the clubs associated with it. However, it is also likely that exactly these people will pack in fishkeeping soon after their first batch of fish will start dying off.
How do you reach these people? Exactly by endorsing LFSs that maintain a minimum standard and give these shop our seal of approval. As we discussed here previously, the easiest way to do this is by giving every LFS in the country a chance to qualify for it and give them a stickers that they can display in their shop window. A small step but I think a vital one since I do not see any chance of government regulation in the sector. If we can't even agree that dyed and/or disformed fish should not be sold than we might as well forget about it and this forum will degenerate into an idle chat shop. Not really what I think it should be

Wow, this is become a heated debate, combined with a few Christmas drinks, has made a dangerous concoction, the whole think I more complex the a one paragraph argument some I would like to separate it to sub sections so if some one agrees or disagrees with me they can quote one paragraph rather than ending up having a big argument about the whole post, I want to divide it into>

1. Mortality rate
2. Moral grounds
3. Plain Tackiness
4.A rant is good for views/members
5. Sponsorship getting some thing done.


MORTALITY RATE
I don’t know if one can do a search engine for mortality rate of deformed Parrot fish and dyed fish or not, and even if you can would the results be skewed to favour the argument, so I am only going to base it from personnel experiences.

I have worked freshwater wise at Ek Will probably the biggest freshwater wholesaler in the states in Tampa , Florida and Neil Hard Aqatica , again probably the biggest in the U.K, although very small by U.S standards, I saw very little mortality of Parrots, in fact I cannot recollect any noticeable deaths, in Neil Hardy Aquatica their biggest problem was freshwater butterflies, the Morts in the tanks in 7 days was always way over 50%, I am sure died fish during the actual process of dyeing them is also high, at the fish farms, but obviously they will wait till they are recovered before shipping so one does not see the morts so much.

Supposable one of the sponsors of the ITFS stocks parrots, big deal, what about all the other sponsors that stock marines, I can assure you the mortality rate from reef to final aquarium is much much higher than of died fish and deformed parrot fish, I have worked in Manila in the Philippines and saw about 35% before shipping , then in arrival in the wholesalers I have seen perhaps 12 to 15 % D.O.A, then a further 15/20% before its shipped to the shops then who knows what the shops lose. Terrapins, have horrific losses, so does corals and anemones. To summarise based solely on mortality rate the whole thread is bases on not where the most l morality rates that Joe public sees withy their own eyes.

MORAL GROUNDSTropical fish shop owners should feel bad buying in these fish i.e Genetically deformed Parrot fish and died fish, just because its on the list does not mean they have to ordered, lets face it there will always be a market for bread and butter fish, if a fairly ugly tetra that has been painted pink that other wise would be fairly plain looking is not in stock, and a cardinal tetra is, well the beginner will buy the cardinal rather than trek over town looking for a died fish.

There is many more things that are morally wrong, other than Parrots and died fish that have been ignored her, such as artificially colouring fish, I know this goes on now a a days in freshwater whole sellers especially with young Africans the are kept in holding tanks with methyl testososrone so they colour up, have you ever seen an non mature African fish sold in LFS in Ireland that was extremely colourful then it losses its colour latter.


PLAIN TACKINESS
Well I think we would all agree expect complete beginners that Parrots and dies fish look tacky, if any on e dis agrees with me on that point I would like to know what you find attractive about them, but tackiness does not stop with keeping they monsters in your aquarium, IMO there is a large degree of fish tanks that I have seen by photo media and Utube video that are IMO also quite tacky, please do not ask me to name them, in fact there is one of the nicest guys on the forum that regular post that has ornaments in the tank just like in the film finding nemo, I have seen African post with horrible rock, they do not even look real, Tufa rock, grotto rock or volcanic rook, live rock i.e in marine tank naturally, perhaps even Besington rock yes but not any thing else, just think you have just spent several hundred euros to buy and tank and stock it then you ruin it with a few mountain rocks and sunken caves and skeleton heads, form 1 to 10 that’s a 8 for being tacky, if you want to up grade it to 10 out of 10 for being tack than add some parrot fish of died fish.

A RANT IS GOOD FOR THE FORUM.
The discus article will go down in history for being and uncontrolled atom bomb, that made more and more viewers go on line, this subject is very touchy a bet every LFS is logging on even as an guest hopping there name is not toss around and to see what happens, this rant must be good if JohhH as re joined the forum, its nice to see him back, hopefully my new pope comment thing worked or was it the new thread about minimum standards that enticed whim back.

SPONSORSOne of the member is talking about paying for ad Ad in a local paper non fish keeping paper, well if its in the free ads its worth a try, may I suggest a 1 column by 50 ad in the Practical fish keeps mag under Ireland/shops, I would prepared to pay for it if it for a couple of additions provided it also mentions the ITFS club with the forum as oppose to just the forum I have been in it one and off since 1982, I would love to give some thing back, in Ireland I feel it would be better to target LFS with a sticker that is visible from out side in their shop window, but before any of this is done please re exam the mortality rated of other aquatic friends, than main one has to be goldfish doom many die in pet shops , too many terrapins die in Pet shops and to many butterflies and inverts die in specialist LFS, do we really want to sponsor the tacky stuff or do we want to only get involved in what YOU SEE in your LFS…


As a foot note, who is in charge of the admin of the forum now Anthony has stepped down, I have my own issued which I will post separately under “admin” if there is any admin please can you look under recent posts in forum suggestions now that I have you attention.
Regards
Sean A.Connolly
The ar$e formally know as Fr. Jack.

thanks Sean something to focus our ideas and some clarification that was need. and plenty of things that have to be considered there.

Hi Sean
Welcome back
I for one have sorely missed you. and for once totaly agree with all you have said. an add in the PFK will send a message that we over here care and see haow many follow, it will certainly cause a debate.
I think there is only one County in the Republic that supports CITES & there is no feedback from them. Is it a case of going through the motions. and not realy caring.
A good idea would be if all the members contacted there local offices and asked if they were a supporter of CITES & the Protection of All Wild & Endagerd Species rms and see what the response is.
Do all our sponsors go along with the suggested proposals????
As stated the debate will run & run,

While i do not see the sence in placing adds in an English Mag, one which the vast majority of the Irish people never heard tell of. But i will go with the flow WE will but a few bob towards an add! so long as it is for this site and those clubs involved with the site.

Every member will have different thoughts on what decorations are tacky and what is not, tacky decorations never harmed any fish. I don't think you can fairly describe any fish as tacky, what defines tancky in a live animal, shape, colour etc. Surely lots of killis, cichlids and marines would be tacky too?

For the purposes of generating a rule or statement covering dyed fish etc., how do we define what is an is not acceptable. It seems that using hybrids as a definition excludes too many fish ????

Dyed and Tattoo'd are simple enought to understand once someone explains there terms or illustrates the fish, but how do you cover off long-fins, hybrids, if at all?

Where do balloon mollies fit in, which in my personal opinion are one of the most awful looking fish to come of the market in most shops in recent times.

I beleive if a fish in its natural environment say a reef is extremely colourful, its not tacks, even a dooty back which is half pink and half yellow, as its real!, a freshwater tetra painted yellow or pink is tacky. A parrot fish is freaky like so its tacky, an amazon tank should look as close as possible to LuxToms tank posted, an african tank should have volcanic rock or tufa rock, if its got plastic plants and ocean rock it does not look real so its a tiny tiny bit tacky,a marine tank (fish only )should be tufa or volcanic rock or if its reef then live rock, in a community freshwater tank, a tank would look better if its 50% deeper (18 inches)from back to front with volcanic rock with some live plants, if the top was open with a suspended halogen type bulb norammly used on marines but exchange for 5,600K light instead of 10.000K then it going to look even better, a 12 inch tank from back to front with no bacKdrop in rocks just a poster stuck to the back with a few rocks pinch off the local beach with a mismatch fish mix looks IMO tacky, then if you add died fish then it looks even more tacky.

Irish fish keepers do buy the PFK magazine, OK every 4 years its repeating it self, so its tarkeget bigeners, but its the main fish keeping magazine so until Ireland has its own magazine its the prefer choice also its target marketing so an ad in the is going to give the best value. rather the advertising in the Irish Independent of Herald.

@Sean,
valid points. Mortality rate in marines is quite high because the fish are being hauled up to fast from depth. Unfortunately the same happens to some Malawis.

I agree with Darragh. Tacky decorations are a matter of taste. As long as they do not harm fish. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Even though some beholders should have gone to specsavers or called the taste police before they set up their tanks.

@Russell

CITES does not work because you can't really police it. It is rather the habitat destruction than catching a few animals that will lead to species extinction. And the head huncho of Greenpeace drives a big fat Mercedes. Enough said about this organization I don't want to side track this thread here but feel free to open another one and I will go into it in detail.

@Darragh,
Balloon mollies ( and they had pictures of balloon Pearl gouramis in PFK recently) are horrid looking things. Their spine is deformed. The same deformation you get in parrot cichlids and thus should be banned.

Hybrids are defined as coming from parents of two different parent species. A lot of them tend to be infertile if you try to breed them with another hybrid of the same parent species crossing. However, most of them can breed successfully if they pair with either of the parent species. Their are naturally occurring hybrids, especially amongst live bearers such as Gambusias. The theory goes that if you isolate these hybrids for long enough and they turn out fertile you will get a new species over time.
Do we really want to play evolution? And probably cock it up.
Every specialist aquatic association (cichlids, anabatoids, killifish, etc.) is trying their best to maintain the genetic integrity of the species. From a practical point of few you would all of a sudden have all those 'new' species (that are actually hybrids) and nomenclature would get pretty mixed up with people trying to scientifically describe all these 'new' species. I am sure all you rift valley cichlid keepers would be delighted to get all these new species on the market that turn out to be only hybrids and then when a real new species comes along everybody would have their suspicions if it is only a hybrid. Hybrids also give the antis more ammunition against fishkeepers. IMO these are the reason why hybrids should be banned.

IMO, I do not think it will make any difference if we take out an ad in PFK. Who's going to read it? People that already know the score anyway. I don't go for the feel good factor here. If PFK want to put it in for free, fair enough, I am all for it.

The local paper and Buy and Sell alternative sounds better to me. But I would put it into a different format. Rather like saying, don't buy dyed and deformed fish, we should put in an ad more along the lines: Don't set up a new aquarium without contacting one of the fish clubs first. And we will have to put contact numbers in the ads since I do not want to see the forum clogged up with yet another cycling thread.

Sorry Holger I Dissagree. The PFK is the pefect place to voice out concerns. it is distributed world wide and is also read by the Trade. with coverage like that I think the trade will have to rethink there ideas and fall into line. As for MERCEDE's isnt that a German Car????.
The point about CITES was an Inference that The Republic has NO policing policies on the trade of Reptilia ect and any one can open up and have no worries.

What are we trying to achieve in this thread? The original post contained three points:

-no dyed fish for sale
-Tankbusters like arowanas, oscars, etc. clearly marked as such. Fish like red tailed cats shouldn't even be sold
-Tanks with sick fish should be clearly marked 'not for sale'.

Would it be assuming too much to say that everyone here agrees with those three points? That those three issues be part of any agreement with sponosors?

If we could establish that first, then we can move on the the trickier area or hybrids, which includes flowerhorns, parrotts and whatever else. But if we could at least get the first three points out of the way it would be a start.

When it comes to advertising, I think that advertising the site is a better idea than advertising not to buy dyed fish. PFK have been running a no dyed fish campaign for years and it gets a lot more coverage in every issue than we could hope to purchase, so I don't think there is much we can add in that publication. If we drive advertising to this site and place a permanent banner on dyed fish on the front page that would lead to a discussion thread on the topic, including some photos, links etc. Just a suggestion...

russell wrote:

The point about CITES was an Inference that The Republic has NO policing policies on the trade of Reptilia ect and any one can open up and have no worries.

Try telling that to the shop in Limerick that had its delivery taken by customs officers.

the PFK has been running a dyed fish pledge for a while now so by placing adds there you are not educating people against the cruel practise.

We need to agree on something like this:

We the fishkeepers of Ireland in one voice declare that we will not buy and will discourage the sale of any species that has been altered from its natural form by machine or scientific alteration.

Russell, who cares where Mercedes are made? Well, at least he's looking for reliability or he'd be driving an English car. Is that enough of a racial slur for you for now? Can we keep an eye on the ball?
Cites does not work. If anybody needs a Cites cert, give me a call. All you have to do is copy the bloody things and fill in the details. If they are truthful or not does not matter because nobody can prove you any different. This has been going on since the mid-eighties when my dad was breeding poison arrow tree frogs. We used CITEs certs to light the fire at home. The guy in Limerick must have been a completed dope to get caught.

@Mickey,
nice try to get to some conclusion but you are missing out on two vital points.All those lovely guppies, platies, bettas, albino corys etc. would be included in your statement.
I don't think anybody is suggesting banning any of them to be banned.
Even if fish are GM manipulated it does not automatically conclude that these fish have suffered in their creation or are suffering due to their genetic alteration. Case in point are those glowlight danios that the animal welfare scaremongers have so far succeeded to keep off the market. Just have to stop myself into going into another rant.

IMO, forget the ad in PFK. Most people starting off will have never have heard of it or couldn't be arsed reading if they saw it in a shop. Fish exporters couldn't care less since they will not experience a drop in sales of dyed/deformed fish. You would also have to run the ad in every issue which would cost too much. However, in free ad papers you are more likely to have some success. The ad is free and can be run indefenitly with no cost and people actually might read it. By all meansd put posters up in LFSs that allow you to display them.

apistodiscus wrote:

And we will have to put contact numbers in the ads since I do not want to see the forum clogged up with yet another cycling thread.

I disagree with this if we don't have these treads on a regular basis then we have no new blood and the site will die.

this tread is going in circles and needs to be focused and people must start leaving personal preferences out of it and stop trying to make this a world thing. There are plenty of groups fighting this fight in the world but we need to aim solely at this matter in in the context of this country.

mwdragondk wrote:

apistodiscus wrote:

And we will have to put contact numbers in the ads since I do not want to see the forum clogged up with yet another cycling thread.

I disagree with this if we don't have these treads on a regular basis then we have no new blood and the site will die.

this tread is going in circles and needs to be focused and people must start leaving personal preferences out of it and stop trying to make this a world thing. There are plenty of groups fighting this fight in the world but we need to aim solely at this matter in in the context of this country.

I agree Mickey, we're trying to solve too many problems at once, one step at a time. Back to Holgers original three points again, are we all agreed on that much for now?

I believe in free speech but not when one person dominates and imposes themselves as the voice of the ITFS. The forums seem to be going downhill, and bitchiness is comming back in. Fom now I will only browse the forums and withdraw from any participation.
I get confused as to who runs the site, and especialy when Mods start crisising and belittleing other Mods.
Perhaps if there was a mod for each section that specialised in that topic it would help solve the problems. but we have mods taking over 50% of the site forums.
So I wish you the best for the future and will watch with keen interest
regards
Russ,

We all agree on the same thing yet the same people persist on insulting one another and bitching, its all becoming a load of bull****.

JohnH wrote:

BTW is it just coincidence that, despite now being on its sixth page of postings, not one of our sponsors has made an utterance on the subject?

It would be nice for some input from them to hear from the retailing side of it, and what they can do...

To be honest I've avoided this thread as it's all over the place as regards objective, it's been from GM fish to CITIES and back again, once it reaches a definite route I'll participate.

However, I'm going to assume that the debate is about what should be the miniumun standards in shops. Saying sign's should be posted up about fish etc is all well and good, however, what is the point when A)management don't listen and B ) you have people who havent a clue serving the public. Luckily I'm not in an enviroment like the above, frankly I couldn't work in one either.

From working in a sponsors heres my opinion. From having basic bits and pieces of knowledge I've gotton to learn an immense amount of knowledge from the lads around me. My own opinion on the GM/Dyed fish issue is as follows. I'm not fond of parrots or other 'test tube' fish, dyed fish are a no no, I've never kept, sold, or recommended such and will never import them.

As a hobbyiest, my honest opinion is that there is already plenty of nice fish out there. Theres no need for the likes of dyed corys parrots etc.

John, wether this helps or not I do not know, It's from my point of view and by all means if you wish to ask a question on the issue please do so.

In responce to Darraghs post, I would glady do a step by step marine set up if asked, after all if it helps anyone, then it is worthwhile, however I know what will happen as it already has a fierce reputation on the forum already, is that some individual will come along and say ''thats wrong'' or ''Mr X told me to do it differently''. If this element was removed I would openly participate.

hope this helps somewhat(mind you it probably wont)