A LECTURE on fish breeding projects at Tropiquaria was given by the Washford Cross zoo’s aquarist at a conference in Poland earlier this month.

Shaun Stevens was addressing the Goodeid Working Group hosted by Plock Zoo, about two hours travel from Warsaw.

Delegates came from Portugal, France, Norway, Austria, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Germany, and Shaun was the only one from a UK zoo to speak.

Topics debated included successful breeding of the endangered species of fish, the possibility of finding new species in Mexico, and the potential for re-introduction of some of the species in areas where they have become extinct.

Goodeids are a group of small livebearing fish from Mexico. So far, about 40 species have been discovered – Tropiquaria has three that are extinct in the wild.

Because each species exists over only a small area in a country with a rapidly growing population and many environmental challenges, some of the species could go extinct very easily through a single pollution incident or a major weather event.

Their small size and plain appearance means few are at aquariums open to the public, and the same characteristics lead few individual aquarists to keep goodeids.