Seems Fish To Me:

Painted Glassfish

By Spencer Glass

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For this, my inaugural piece for the Conscientious Aquarist, I have to go back to where it all started. I don’t mean Genesis.  I don’t mean the Ice Age.  I don’t even mean the frameless aquarium.  And what do I mean by "It?"

"It," is what I believe is the causal effect that should have opened our eyes to the fact that we need to start looking into the role within the hobby we have to take as hobbyists.  In this case, I believe, is the appearance/emergence of “Painted” Glassfish.  Now I hear you hollering out, “Oh, come on Glass, (no pun intended, or maybe there is) there have been worse problems to deal with before that.  What about releasing Oscars and Piranha into Floridian waters?  What about cyaniding Philippine coral reefs?  What about this,  what about that?”  They are all legitimate concerns.  (Especially the “what about thats”)

What I’m talking about here is when the envelope was pushed way too far.  Once we started accepting dyed fish into our hobby, we’d done just went too dang far.  I can’t help but imagine some seedy fish exporter looking over his bottom line, exclaiming, “We’re just not selling enough glassfish...we must sell more Glassfish!”  In an effort to make 3 more cents a day, some cerebral little boy meekly shimmies over to the Fishlord and mumbles, “We should paint them, sir.”

“WHAT?” he bellows. 

The boy, a little  stronger in voice articulates, “We should paint them sir...bright colors, then people would buy them”.

The Fishlord twirls his feathery beard, and shouts, “Everyone, stop what you’re doing!”  The little boy smiles, sensing a full loaf of bread for dinner tonight.

The Fishlord kicks him in the rear, sends him away boisterously glowering, “Mind your manners, you little impish slug.  How dare you make my idea your own!  Now git.  You’re fired”

As the boy despondently slithers away the Fishlord avers, “I have the answer!”

Yes, I have a way of letting my imagination run away with me, but you do get a glimpse of the picture here, don’t you?  So let’s talk about the “Glassfish” before the world of fluorescence brandished it’s nasty brush on the scaly canvas.

There are two fish commonly referred to in the trade as Glassfish; The Chanda ranga, and the Chanda baculis.  Of these two Southeast Asian fish, the one most commonly used for painting would be the latter, Chanda baculis.  And true, in and of itself, this is no spectacular fish.  Obviously it’s got to be an easy catch for importers in the confines of its natural range, India, Myanmar and Thailand.  I would speculate the initial fascination with this fish was its transparent body.  You could see right inside, organs, bones, and everything.  Neat!

I must admit when I re-entered the hobby, post-childhood around 1986, my eyes fell upon a tank labeled “Painted Glassfish”.  They were transparent with a spinal stripe, colored either pink, or yellow, or orange, or blue, or purple, or green.  Wow!  They were pretty neat.  I wondered why I never saw them as a kid.  I woulda bought a bunch of them.  I asked the store employee if they were real.  It was a dumb question and I got a dumber answer.  “Uh, yeah they’re real.  All the fish here are real.”

“I mean is the color real...naturally that way?”

His eloquent, yet glib reply was, “Uh, yeah!”

Okay, I didn’t believe him but I bought about five anyway.  That was my first mistake.  I’ll tell you or yell at you later as to why.  They’re not hard to keep.  As a matter of fact they’re pretty easy, and get along with most tropicals their size.  While they are not exactly considered a schooling fish, they do enjoy being with their own kind.  They are nice mid-level aquarium swimmers and will remain healthy provided water conditions are met.  You need not be overly precise, as with discus, but keeping the water on the warmer side of the tropical range, say 76 to 78 degrees F. suits them.  pH in the neutral (7.0) to slightly acidic range (6.8) pleases them as well. 

There is some degree of disagreement as to the positive or negative aspect of salt in the aquarium these fish reside in.  Here’s my experience.  A dose of one teaspoon of salt in just about any freshwater aquarium has an amazing prophylactic effect.  In general all of my aquariums are treated as such, and it is a rarity that I have an outbreak of “ich” or fungus.  Some other species of Glassfish may be considered brackish and require a higher salt concentration.  Either way, I have not seen glassfish, or any fish for that matter, suffer from the addition of NaCl.

Glassfish are hearty non-finicky eaters.  As with most fish, keep them on a varied diet of quality flake, as well as frozen, freeze-dried and live foods.  This diet and proper water conditions should allow your Glassfish to thrive.  The injected dye doesn’t seem to affect their health adversely. However, that doesn’t make it good!

Here’s where I went wrong when I bought my Painted Glassfish.  I wasn’t educated.  I wasn’t thinking.  I’m not a big proponent of governmental legislation.  I’m a Libertarian at heart...I think.  I don’t want our government to outlaw Painted Glassfish.  The reason they have become so prevalent is that stupid people like me buy first and think later.  I give kudos to those stores that refuse to sell them.  This is despite the fact that they are great sellers.  Unknowing, rookie hobbyists buy them.  They ask the same questions I do, and often get the same responses.  Sometimes they get the truth and buy them anyway.  And what’s so wrong with that?

I’ll put it as succinctly as possible.  It’s not our job to screw with nature’s work.  How’d you like a needle shoved in your back to make you turn green?  Our hobby comes with a certain degree of responsibility.  It involves living things.  If you like garish fancy colors, take up painting or needlepoint, or jewelry making.  What’s happened as a result of the Painted Glassfish’s popularity is that we are seeing this done more and more to other naturally beautiful tropical fish.  Is it really okay to dye an Oscar blue?  We laugh at an old lady’s hair, but we’ll buy something called a Blueberry Oscar, or Strawberry Tetra.  Well, knock it off!  Buy a Pop Tart marketed like that, not fish.