Jim

I talked to someone about this before, might have been Isabella, I'm not sure. Anyway, we were talking about inbreeding and how a male and female from the same parents that pair up 99% of the time will won'nt be fertile. And I guess that odd 1% would be filled with inbred deformed fry. I've been very careful to try and make sure my 2 were bought at different LFS's at different times.

As for the male being weaker, maybe, but if that's the case then I have an exception. My big gold ghost, Sparkle, is about as tough a fish as I've ever owned. And being such a specialized variety, both gold and a ghost (no stripes of any sort), the conventional logic is he'd be weaker than a wild angel. But he's ridden out my cycling mistakes, fungus's, bacteria's... a bunch of stuff that killed off most of the fish around him. And he's still here.
And then the female, the black one, is the only fish to not only stand up to Sparkle, she made the first move (at least when I saw it)! Both are very tough angels, but I went thru a lot before I found them.

Allie

Well that's good to hear about your male angel...I hope one or both of my un sexed are male. I guess I have just bad luck wiht male angelfish.

Jim

It wasn't until last week when they laid their first batch of eggs that I knew for sure he was a male.

Allie

I guess I just have to wait and see whenever they either lay eggs or fertilize them. I have 4 females out of the 6 now.

Isabella

LOL, that's just the matter of how you program your mind to look at this situation. You can easily wrap the dead body in plastic bags, lots of times, so that it's completely insulated and won't leak anything into your freezer. You can even put it in some closed plastic container, etc ... I'm sure you won't die from handling it. There's always soap after handling dead fish There are also latex gloves

Allie

I've definitely have come to the conclusion that 12 angelfish, 10 tetra and 4 plecos, was too much for our 120g. The angelfish preferred one end of the tank for a bit...how that there is only 6 in there they all seem MUCH happier.

Oh I know I have handled plenty of dead bodies over the past year...a cat, goldfish, Betta, angelfish....even my rat Ben died.

Isabella

Allie, I could have many more Angels in my 75 gallon tank too, but I've decided for only 2 They seem very happy like this - having the entire tank to themselves (they obviously ignore the smaller fish as they know they're not a real threat to them, lol).

Isabella

You certainly don't have to agree with me That fish and animals in the wild virtually get no cancer, I know from readings. I didn't make that up. Read about it many times. Now, of course, maybe there is an occasional cancer case in the wild, but if there is: it's VERY RARE compared to the incidence of cancers in domesticated and captive-bred animals. You can ask any veterinarian doctor about it.

The same applies to humans. The "primitive" tribes (by our modern standards), who virtually have no contact with modern civilization, also virtually get no cancer. Coincidence? Don't think so. Whenever the highly-chemical man-made industry (as well as packaged and processed food) appears, so does the incidence of all kinds of diseases, particularly cancer and heart disease. Another coincidence? I don't believe so.

There are tons of books written on these subjects. If you only want to read them, they're all at your disposal

P.S. Animals on farms are not the same as animals in the wild. Animals on farms are fed with foods that were meddled with by humans. And that means mostly unhealthy food. Hence more diseases. Animals are flesh and blood like us, and like us, they're susceptible to diseases if they're loaded with toxins (just as we're being loaded with toxins every day from our toxic foods and environments). Cancer is not some new incurable pandemic. It's a disease deliberately caused BY HUMANS, particularly by huge greedy food, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries/corporations.

Jim

Allie, sometimes with certain fish, you can't just go by the "inch per gallon" rule. Going by just that you should have been just fine in a 120 gallon until they got big. But fish like angels carve out territories in a tank. And although I can't say for certain, I'm reasonably sure that to the angelfish, the number of gallons doesn't matter... it's going to take as big a territory as it wants to take. So even though you have enough gallons, per say, to sustain a community like you discribed, the nature and personality of the fish can throw the "inch per gallon" rule right out the window.


Just keep looking... I had a lot of weaker angels die before finally came across a couple of good healthy ones. I think, even in the best LFS, you get a lot of weak, traumatized fish, and it's just like you said, a matter of luck finding the really healthy ones among the rest. I find a really good sign is watch when the LFS clerk tries to catch your fish. If it doesn't try and run, you don't want it. Go for the one that fights the hardest... usually that's a good one. Basically, if it drives the clerk nuts trying to get it, it's usually a keeper.

Allie

Well I still have my gold and black both un sexed...here's hoping they are both male OR at least one of them.

sirdarksol

As with most things, the truth here is somewhere in the middle. I have studied animal physiology, as well (I like animals), and to say that wild animals get "virtually no cancer" is untrue.
However, it is very true that wild animals have very significantly smaller rate of cancer. This is because the majority of the world's carcinogens are artificially created. Yes, there are a few, such as smoke from a forest fire, but I doubt that a wild animal sucks in anywhere near as much smoke in their lifetime as we suck in each day from the amount of waste produced by cars and factories. Additives to foods, cooked meat (that's right, cooking meat, or more specifically, overcooking meat, makes it carcinogenic), artificial sweeteners, pesticides on our veggies, the list goes on, and that's only considering foods.
I'm not saying that we need to stop all of this stuff, just that there is a price to pay for human growth, and we need to start thinking about how much we are willing to pay.
And, of course, once you take a wild animal and put it into a place where it is exposed to the same stuff that we are exposed to, all bets are off.
There are, however, a few critters that do not get cancer. One of the most prominent (and closest to human physiology) is the shark, which is one reason that I give to people who don't actually care about nature that we would be better served by maintaining our oceans better. Keeping sharks alive in captivity is very hard. It takes a lot of water, and their lifespan is drastically shortened (from centuries to decades, in some cases). But to learn the secret of their immunity to cancer, we need them.

Isabella

I am not any expert in animal sciences, of course, so I give it up to Sirdarksol , lol .

sirdarksol

While I appreciate the sentiment, I wouldn't say I'm an expert. A well-learned hobbyist may be a better term. There is still a whole bunch of stuff that I don't know. If you put me next to, say, an ichtyologist, I look like an idiot when it comes to fish.
I just know that I've seen other reports similar to the stuff that was being described about seeing moose with cancerous tissues.

Of course, there's also the possibility that these reports are coming from places that have been tainted by something, either by a natural source of carcinogens (a deposit of a cancer-causing mineral, perhaps) or by their proximity to a human-tainted water/air source. Remember that anything downstream of a polluting factory is similarly affected. So my rant above could have been right, but right for the wrong reasons.

Isabella

That's gotta be the only way, as nature - in its PURE unpolluted state - will not cause cancer in a living organism. Yes, it will cause genetic mutations over millions of years during evolution, which is natural, but not a sudden diseased cancer. That's what I basically meant in my response above. In pure and healthy natural environments, people and animals don't just "get" cancer. There MUST BE a cause for it. And this cause in today's world are the following: polluted environment (i.e. air, soil, and water), highly toxic foods (irradiated, grown on pesticides and antibiotics, genetically modified, etc ...), and poisonous chemical industry in general (especially poisonous drugs). The list goes on ...

sirdarksol

Not necessarily true. Even a completely healthy animal not exposed to carcinogens will periodically create cancerous cells. Also, as I said, there are natural carcinogens. There is no such thing as a pure place. Every place on earth has viruses, UV rays, carbon monoxide (from fires and volcanoes and the like) However, in this few of quantities, the immune system can deal with these the majority of the time. Every once in awhile, the immune system will fail to catch the cancerous cell until it's too late. The more cancerous cells are produced, the more of a chance of the immune system missing one of them. This is what makes sharks so strange. They either don't produce cancerous cells, or their immune system never misses them.

Isabella

AGREED. I DO know that even in natural environmets there may be an OCCASIONAL cancer case. But what I mean by saying "natural" is such that it was NOT tampered with by humans in any way, and that which is not man-made. Yes, nature has its "traps" too, but compared to the degree of severity of man-made toxins, pollutants, etc ... the ones found in nature are virtually harmless COMPARED TO the ones that are man-made. I am speaking very generally here and rather statistically, and not on some sophisticated level based on very specific examples, such as some very specific naturally occurring carcinogens. I am not qualified enough to give such specific examples

OCCASIONAL cases of cancer in nature are natural as they're the result of nature itself, but very frequent cases of cancer (such as in polluted environments) are VERY unnatural as they're the result of destructive human activity.

And yes, I DO know, that all living organisms are producing cancerous cells ALL THE TIME, but their immune systems are able to deal with them. ONLY an organism's immune system is GREATLY weakened by pollutants and toxins present in foods tampered by man, polluted and toxic air, and polluted water. Immune system in a weakened state will let the cancerous cells take over. And that's what happens DRASTICALLY more often in environments that are tampered with by man, AS OPPOSED to purely natural (once again, by purely "natural", I mean not tampered with by man) environments not affected by all the toxins and pollutants produced by man.

Whew ... lol