Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish | Hacker News Reader

Asian Arowana: The most expensive pet fish

thehustle.co

76 pointsrmason20 comments

I guessed this was the Arowana before the page loaded. Always thought those were incredible fish, didn't know they were illegal in the US.

I've definitely seen a lot of them online in aquarist circles. One wonders if the US prohibition might be counterproductive given how much of the population is probably now in farms/aquariums.

I wonder why axolotls aren't illegal? From what I understand, they're even more critically endangered, existing only in one small lake outside Mexico City.

I don't like being cynical but bureaucratic inertia is the simple answer. There's no good reason for the distinction other than one got grandfathered in before it got banned.

Non-Asian arowana are legal and common aquarium fish.

That explains my confusion, thanks!

Axolotls are now illegal to trade in California, but that's only at the state level.

Axolotls have a much longer history of being bred in captivity than arowana. They're actually regularly used as lab animals.

Axolotls available as pets are bred in captivity. They breed in captivity quite well, so there's no need to take from wild population to support the pet industry. The wild population is diminishing not because of a pet trade but because of environmental degradation of their ecosystem, meaning that reintroduction efforts from the domestic population isn't really possible.

I'm pretty sure I saw an Asian arrowana in a pet store in east San Jose about ten years ago. It had a back kink, so it wouldn't have been a very valuable animal, but I was still shocked to see it openly on display.

The South American and Australian species are legal to own, and I see them in the hobby all the time.

I used to have two Arowana about 15 years ago, they were fascinating fish. Then one day I got up in the morning and they were just… gone.

Tank was well sealed, nothing in there big enough to eat one let alone both of them, and I checked everywhere… one of the unsolved mysteries in my life is where they went.

Probably stolen.

I'm surprised by stories like these that don't allow for the sale/ownership of sustainably farmed fish.

I would guess because verification/enforcement would be difficult. How can you tell a legally farmed fish from an illegal captured one? You’d have to implement some sort of documentation scheme. Easier just to make them all illegal.

Chip them? I mean it wouldn't be that hard. You could also use genome tracing (registered genome lines with the Fish and Game department) That test would take a bit longer but with spot enforcement you'd probably keep compliance acceptably high.

Microchipped arrowana are actually common these days, so you're on the right track.

I don't know the full story, but the US has a blanket ban on any CITES-listed species.

I wonder if this is counterproductive. In California, there are plenty of endangered aquatic species, and if people could legally buy and own captive-bred individuals, then perhaps there could be more native species kept as pets and fewer potentially invasive species.

Even better: maybe regular people with ponds, etc could (easily) get permission to stock them with species that actually belong where they live. And maybe the species would become less endangered.

any number of ways? a simple bill of sale from a legal distributor?

The super-expensive ones are bred for outlier traits like being bright red, platinum white, etc. It seems unlikely that ones harvested from the wild could compete.

Isn't the most expensive fish Kohaku koi? I think some go for $1mm+

There's kind of a technicality here.

There's several very specific and very rare traits that are present in some kohaku (they're not genetic, so we can't just breed for them) that are highly prized. Fish that meet those criteria and go for those prices are quite literally one in a million.

I can go buy a "pet quality" kohaku for under twenty bucks. Meanwhile, it's difficult to find any kind of Asian arrowana for under two thousand dollars.

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