Idea For A Goodei Exchange Group

Most of use know the Goodeid are small livebearer that many hobbyist keep but aren't part of the main stream fish you find in fish stores. This makes it a little hard for people to get a group to start with.

Here is my idea it is in the very early stages and needs some tweaking I'm sure.

Starting with 3 people keeping the same fish in colony tanks call them breeder A, B, and C.

Once a year
Breeder A will send 3-4 fish to Breeder B
Breeder B will send 3-4 fish to Breeder C
Breeder C will send 3-4 fish to Breeder A

With all three Breeders keeping the particular population of fish this will help keep the genetics stable, reduce inbreeding and less likely of the population getting "lost" by mistakes or accidents. This will also save space as a breeder won't have to have multiple tanks setup for the same fish.

As new people join in the exchange the number of fish would expand and making the population more stable and possible build up populations so they could be reintroduce to the wild if that is the goal for that fish. But that is beyond the scope of this group and would be the job of the GWG.

This could be done with multiple species so if you had 4 tanks of Goodeid you could be shipping and receiving fish from each colony. Adding more fish to the shipment wouldn't cost that much more.

The key would be to have one person that collects the data on who is shipping fish, how the fish arrived to the new location and what species each person is keeping. This way you can work out what breeder sends fish to the next breeder and if someone isn't helping they can be removed from the list.

I would like the group to be free to join and each breeder pays for their own shipping to the next person. As I said early stages but got any feed back on this?

 

Sounds like a great idea! Are you talking about goodeI or goodeid?

 

Wow can't believe I did that but yes I misspelled it. It should be Goodeid

 

I think that this sounds great. Considering they are not so mainstream, maybe do a what they are and how to care for them. People may not know much, so maybe you can get more people interested in them.

 

There is a Goodeid Study Group that already has a species maintenance program, as does the American Livebearer Association. You might want to join one of those organizations, they've been doing it for many years.

 

I have joined both of those groups and talking to people there about this type of program. They don't have anything running like this right now but hoping to get this going with their help.

 

Odd, I am pretty sure they did have a few years ago. They sell rare fish at the convention under the auspices of species maintenance. The American Killifish Association also had a species maintenance program, which I was participating in 20 years ago, but I believe it has also died. The problem is finding enough people dedicated to maintaining a species long term.

I will say that many Goodeids come from such restricted environments in the first place that inbreeding is not likely to cause problems. Just maintaining a group helps, and often adding new stock is more likely to cause problems than prevent them.

 

I think they have a program in place but no one uses it, because like you said had to find people to commit to it. I do know the ALA has a auction at their convention and I think a lot of Goodeid are sold then too. Problem is I'm too far to drive down to make that this year.

I have only keep one type of Goodeid years ago and my line slowly dwindled away. At the time I didn't understand some livebearers colony will dwindle by their self if you don't do things to keep them going(like sword tails) and others will suffer from inbreeding (like molly). Having a better understanding and sharing info with others should reduce this in this type of group, at least that is my goal.

I'm not a expert on Goodeid but I'm willing to learn from those that have been keeping them for years and if there is a better way to keep the fish going I'm willing to help those that know better than me. One thing I have noticed is there isn't a lot of info on Goodeid out there and some of that info is bad so you have to watch what info you used and be willing to adjust the tanks as the fish need.

 

Lines dwindling away are not due to genetics, and Mollies do not suffer from inbreeding unless you have bad stock to begin with. Most often the reduction of fecundity is due to environmental and/or dietary conditions. Fancy Guppies took decades to start showing a reduction in fecundity from actual linebreeding, the only provable instance where genetics were involved.

Most people keep Swordtails incorrectly. The same is true for Goodeids. There are lots of Goodeid species in the Midwest region, but they are not found in fish stores but once in a blue moon. Get to some club auctions, and I'll bet you see numerous species of Goodeids.

 

I can't say for sure it was genetics that cause my lines to dwindle but after reading stuff written by Greg Sage it makes sense to me. He talks about that very thing with mollies needing to have to have new genes introduced to keep them going well and how Swordtails the fastest growing males aren't the males you want to be breeding in the colony because it causes issues with genetics. Very interesting read for anyone interested in that stuff. With the colony's I had I would notice the spawns would get smaller over time or some females would stop spawning all together or you would see defects start to be more common. With my guppy line I would add new fish and it would help those issues so I assumed genetics but no way to be sure.

But I have a colony of Poecilia minima (wild type) that do great and never had any issues with them I have upgraded the colony tank a few times because they keep expanding.


I am planning on hitting some of the Club auctions this summer to see what fish I can find. I don't have a local club but Indianapolis isn't too far and they have a auction next month plus a few in Ohio I have thought about. Did find a few places online that has them so there are options .

 

The idea is really great! I'm a goodeid keeper and breeder myself but I do live way too far. Otherwise, I'd love to join.

 

Yeah it is a bit far. I have been emailing the head of the North America Goodeid working group and a few others from that group, I hope to have this up and going this year and maybe the GWG could setup something like this for you guys.

 

Well, I'm a member of Poecilia Netherlands myself and a board member overthere. We have a certain percentage of members who are keeping and breeding goodeids. We tend to preserve as many strains possible for the aquarium scene overhere. Of course, if possible also the data. Sometimes we have to refer to the GWG as well.
We don't really have a real goodeid working group overhere. So, also we try to make the best of it.

 

I have been talking with some members of the NAGWG and ALA . We have started putting together a program to share fish, at this point it is still pretty basic but we should be getting it going very soon. So if you have interested let me know.