Why we breed rather than import

Captive bred fish help keep a good balance of protection for the hobby, by letting fish stock in the wild stay in their natural environment where they belong, doing what they have always done.

That is the first argument and it is the simple one. A fish spawned in a tank in Taranaki was never taken from anywhere. Nothing was netted, nothing was pulled out of a river system, and no habitat had a hole cut in it to fill an order. Multiply that across a hobby the size of this one and it stops being a small thing.

Breeding can keep a species going

Careful ongoing breeding does more than take the pressure off wild stocks. It can keep some species from falling into decline, and out of extinction altogether.

A breeding line that is looked after, kept track of, and passed between people who know what they are doing is a kind of insurance. It will not fix a river, and nobody should pretend that it does. But it means a species disappearing from the wild does not have to mean a species gone for good.

How we breed

None of that works if the breeding is careless. All of our breeding fish are carefully chosen and observed for breeding, and only the best of the best make it into the line. That is slower and it produces fewer fish, and it is the whole reason a fish from here is worth what it costs.

It also means a fish from this site has never gone near the import chain, and that the pair it came from were picked for a reason rather than bought in to fill a gap.

Closer to home

We pride ourselves on wellbeing, and not only the fish. We have gifted angelfish to Ronald McDonald House Wellington and to the children’s ward at Taranaki Base Hospital.

There is something about a tank in a room where people are having a hard time. It gives them something else to look at for a while, and we are glad to be able to put a few of ours where they do some good.