The possibly rarest fish in the world lives in Aquarium Glaser´s fish house

The term "rare" is - as anybody knows - much a matter of subjectivity. As far as small species of fish are concerned, "rare" can mean that they are only rarely collected, or that they are hardly ever exported or imported, respectively, or that they are hardly ever kept in aquaria. "Rare" hardly ever means in that context "there do exist only a few specimens in the world". This would be nonsense in almost all cases, for small fish are always part of a food chain and are placed here in the very beginning. So even species that are seldom or never seen in the trade do exist in large populations of millions and millions of individuals in the natural habitat.*

 

Things are different in the animal we want to introduce to you today: a golden-yellow, wild collected specimen of Gnathonemus petersii, the elephant nose fish. The species itself is anything but rare. We can offer it the whole year through and for moderate prizes. There are almost anytime as many specimens available as needed. I many parts of the enormous range the species inhabits it is a common food fish for the poor, because it is abundant and cheap. But a fishermen in Nigeria can catch every day hundreds of elephant nose fish and will most probably never in his lifetime see a golden specimen. It is very likely that the fish in our fish house is the only live specimen of golden elephant nose fish on the planet that exists currently. And yes, we think that this can be called "rare".

 

This rarity lives happily in the aquarium like any other normal elephant nose fish. It communicates with conspecifics in many ways, for elephant nose fish are comparatively intelligent fishes. A part of the pictures show our "goldie" - which is most probably a male - in company of a normally colored female. Both are about 12 cm long.

 

*For the purists among our readers: yes, of course, we know about the types of killifish, loach, and cave fish that inhabit only a single spring or a single hole in the ground. And of course we know that there can exist only a few hindered specimens per population due to the extremely small habitat. But these are really rare exceptions from the rule and do not falsify the basic statement.

 

For our customers: the fish has code 133563 on our stock list. Please note that we exclusively supply the wholesale trade.

Text & photos: Frank Schäfer