Survey indicates large proportion of fishkeeping hobbyists engaged in producing ornamental fish

Abstract

Ornamental fish are amongst the most popular pets in the world, with a massive number of thriving hobbyist groups both online and in person. The global trade of ornamental fish is growing rapidly. However, documentation of the production of fish is limited, despite this, considerable inroads have been made to document the marine and freshwater trade; this information has primarily been focused on data collection via import/ export data and, as a result there is still limited information on the captive production of fish within a nation. While it is known that hobbyists produce fish, to date there is little information on the scale of this production. This study aimed to document to what extent hobbyists are involved in the production of ornamental fish. This study used a snowball method survey to collect data on the current status of practices in the ornamental hobby. The survey was hosted on two popular online forums, as well as a number of Facebook™ fishkeeping groups. A total of 3304 valid responses were collected, from 76 countries. This study identified that 66.3% of hobbyists surveyed had been actively engaged with breeding fish at some point during their hobby with another 23.5% indicating that they had experienced fish breeding in their aquarium accidentally. There were clear increases in active breeding effort with experience in freshwater hobbyists, however this was not the case with marine fish keepers. The majority of hobbyists did not seek to make a profit from their endeavour, and those who did saw small annual profits, or exchanged fish for store credit. Overall, this study identified a significant number of hobbyists that actively pursue the production of fish at some stage during their hobby and lays the groundwork for further engagement with the hobbyist community required to foster collaboration between them and academia.