Where did the fish your aquarium come from? It's actually one of those questions that could have more than one right
answer.
Maybe your fish came from an aquarium shop or a club auction – but where did they come from before
that? Maybe from a fish breeder? Maybe from a business that brought them to Australia from a fish
farm in another country? But what about before that?
Every fish you keep in your aquarium, or those fishes' ancestors, come from a creek or a river or a lake
or a coral reef (if you have marine fish) somewhere in the world. This is true even for fancy fish, like
those bubble-eyed goldfish or veil-tailed guppies that have been bred for many years (or even centuries)
in fish tanks and ponds and now don't look a lot like their great-great-great grand parents. Finding out where in the
world your fish originally came from can be fun and interesting, but you might need a good book or the internet. You
could go searching the world yourself, but you would need a hat and a lot of lunch money. Try not to get lost and look
out for crocodiles!
Let's grab a map of the world (here's a nice one) and choose a few fish to start our research – we'll stick with some
favorite freshwater tropical fish for now - the Zebrafish, the Angelfish and the Clown Loach . The only other thing we'll
need is a good aquarium fish book or an encyclopedia. We'll start our research on-line by using Wikipedia.
Go to Wikipedia. In the top right of the page is a search box. Let's type “zebrafish” and click
on the little search icon (the magnifying glass).
You should be taken directly to page about the zebrafish which has a first paragraph that
starts:
“The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a tropical freshwater fish belonging to the minnow
family …...”
That's what we want! There really is only one type of
zebrafish and it's scientific name is Danio rerio. (If you
need to brush up on what scientific names are all about,
you could read the article on this website called Scientific
Names – or why fishkeepers sometimes sound like
they are from Mars – but not now! We're in the middle something important.)
The next sentence in that first Wikipedia paragraph also starts with something we
need to know for our research - “Native to the Himalayan region …..”. OK, now you
may already know where the “Himalayan region” is but let's say we don't know. If
you look at the “Contents” box on the Wikipedia page (just below that first
paragraph), you'll see that the second item in the list is called “Distribution” - that
should tell us more about where the zebrafish comes from. Click on “Distribution”.
And right there at the start of the paragraph is what we've been hunting for:
“The zebrafish is native to the streams of the southeastern Himalayan
region, and is found in parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal,
and Burma.”
WooHoo! Check on your map where India is (its the triangle shaped country to the North-west of Australia. The
“Himalayan region” runs right across the top of India and the countries next door – Pakistan to the west, Nepal to the
north and Bangladesh and Burma to the east.
That was easy and now you know where zebrafish come from.
Let's try another one – Angelfish.
You can use the search box at the top of the zebrafish Wikipedia page. Just type in “angelfish” and click the icon to
search. Do it now.
Oh dear! We haven't got an “Angelfish” page like we did for the zebrafish, we've got a long list of dot points that starts
with the words “Angelfish may refer to:”
Why did that happen? Well, it's because the word “angelfish” is used for a few different different things, not just our
freshwater aquarium angelfish. Look at this list. There are several fish called angelfish and even a “a short-lived