There was no personal attack. There was simply good advice. If someone wants to whine and cry like a 5 year old about someone "calling fish names", they don't need to be involved in a discussion about them.
Corax - Telling someone to "go watch cartoons" and then calling them a 5 year old kinda sounds like a personal attack.
I understand that you feel strongly about this issue. I think you could have made your arguement without the attack. The attack implies that YOU do not want to be involved in a discussion either. I'll grant you that Dwarf Puffers' "do not judge" line was out of line as well. Notice that the moderator didn't single out you, Corax, because J double R was talking to BOTH of you! And frankly, you didn't need to continue the attack with the "5 year old" comment. Calling people names NEVER wins them to see your point-of-view on any issue. Just flakes for thought.
NOW
that said, let's see if we can have a discussion. This will be more of an educational thing for me (I hope). And these questions/comments are open to anyone, not just Corax.
My first question was how in the heck do they "paint" fish? I have in my mind Japanese men in lab coats with jewelers glasses on with little tiny instruments telling the splattering fish on the dish to "stop moving". Only they say it in Japanese, so I don't hear that, but what else can they be saying. Okay, I searched the web. According to:
http://www.timstropicals.com/Inventory/NewWorld/BloodParrotInfo.asp
"There are also many variations of color which are produced through dipping these fish in stripping chemicals and then in brightly colored dyes. This stunts the growth and decreases the life span of the fish. Colors last for 4 – 6 weeks." The above link is reference 2 in the Wikipedia article on blood parrots:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_parrot_cichlid
Okay, from what I barely remember reading (I'm VERY new to the hobby), fish have some sort of protective lubricated mucous (what's it called?) that helps protect them from diseases. So to get the fish to "keep" the color longer they need to strip the mucous off. Then the fish are dumped into a dye and eventually into an disease-prone, over-crowded tank without that protective layer. Gee, I wonder why this stunts their growth and life span? :wall: Anyway, outside of the ethics of "painting" these fish, there is the ethics of selling a customer a fish that won't have the same color 4-6 weeks later. I wonder if they advertise that? lazyNode, do you know?
Second, Corax said that these fish were "test-tube". What exactly is done? I mean, a lot could be meant by that phrase. I know people who are "test-tube"! So, outside of the dyes or paint, how are these fish made? The issue for me is really the breeding. Is it completely laboratory test tube (insemination?) or tank crossbreeding? UCF-Planted claimed that "BPs are simply fish that have been selectively bred for their looks" which, to me, implies that it is NOT test tube. So his mule argument is interesting. It's hard to find information about this on the web. (One of the Wikipedia references which mentioned the jellybean phenomena claimed that those were bred that way!) It seems this question is difficult to answer because the sellers don't want to disclose their methods (business secrets). Corax, do you know of any good source on this?
I'm wondering because I'm not sure I would have much of a problem with the breeding thing, even if the end result was not fertile. In that sense, the mule argument works for me. If you introduce two species and they happen to mate and produce offspring, what's wrong with that?
The About.com article (reference 3 in the Wikipedia link) wasn't clear on the infertility issue. "Although Parrots have been known to mate and even lay eggs, generally they are infertile. There have been sporatic cases of successful spawnings, generally when they have been crossed with a non-hybrid fish." Generally does not mean ALWAYS to me. Although any pseudospecies with a low fertility rate is doomed to sexual selection likely. The more curious statement is the ability to crossbreed. There have been cases of mules doing that as well.
However, I don't particularly approve of the creation of BPs if crossbreeding via artificial insemination. In that sense the beef and chicken argument doesn't work for me. Artificial insemination is used (extensively, btw) in the dairy industry to produce cows that put out more milk, HOWEVER, they aren't creating some new infertile offspring. It is more akin to breeding in dogs for certain characteristics (e.g., sheperding instinct), a practice that has been going on for thousands of years. (Although, AI allows this at a much faster and possibly dangerous rate. What's more is that I don't think the price of milk has gone down because of the greater out put either... you see, cows that produce more milk are more expensive anyway!)
It all hinges on how they are created to me. And the way I just phrase that makes me wonder if it is a religious question. I mean, the breeding we do in dogs and cats and cows and swine isn't "natural" by any means, so is it just the creation of something new (the monster, the abomination, one website called it Frankenstein) that we have a problem with. Is it because God or Mother Nature didn't create it?
Sorry for the long post.
