Is it proper for me to post pictures of aquarium fishes whose countries of origin are known? I used to import tropicalfishes and have many great photos.
Thanks
Frank
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You could mark them as wild if you mark them with the exact date and location of collection.
If you don’t know that, instead upload them as captive with the date and location of wherever you took the photo.
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Thank you. I don’t have a date of collection, or the exact collection location (except for one Corydoras catfish), only the country of export. So I’ll follow your second suggestion. Thanks.
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iNat’s not really for posting pets. A few here or there are OK, but they should be kept to a minimum.
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If you can get an accurate collection location/roughly accurate date from the collectors or importers, why not, inat’s pretty lacking on the small freshwater fish department, just mark the location on inat as where the fish were collected from, not where the picture was taken
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The most useful to post would be species with few or no good photos on iNaturalist. For species that already have good photos and many observations, maybe better to post on Flickr or some other site.
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If you don’t know or can’t remember what your aquarium fish are you can use iNaturalist’s AI to figure them out, jot down the species name in a private list and not upload the pictures.
Knowing what species your fish are makes it easier to find out their natural life history and their role in the ecosystem.
Part of me thinks that most owners of exotic pets should find out what their pets would be doing in their natural environment.
All of me thinks that. Better yet would be if they found that out before getting the exotic pet. Most problems with exotic pets, that make people want to give them up, come from expecting them to behave in human-approved ways instead of their own ways. With fishes, that may be less of a problem.
I have, in the past, attempted to get collection data, but the collectors refused to give it to me. I guess they were afraid I’d give that info to a rival collector. And the importer only knows the country of export.
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Brent, no problem with me knowing the genus and species of the fish. I was very much into the taxonomy of the fishes I kept, even when the darned taxonomists kept changing the names! And if I didn’t know, I had the resources to find out as I worked for a public aquarium, and a taxonomist was my boss. Fun times going through old literature.
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