[Killietalk] Rebooting the thread: Commercial imports; what to label them?

["wm crash" <wm_crash at hotmail_com>]

Hi,

I think the original thread was about commercial imports. I am not in the 
fish business by any means, but I assume some commercial collectors are 
better than others at stating collection sites. At the point where these 
fish are passed down to hobbyists, much of the collection information may 
have been dropped. What do we do at that point to have some sort of 
visibility as to what "batch" those fish came from?

I say we label with importer code and month/year (just like Mark said would 
work fine - I may even add the 'day' since some importers will get stock 
more than once a month). Yes, that means the few pairs that come in make up 
a "location". Some have said that this is limiting genetic diversity. I'd 
like to know how that compares to the amount of fish brought in by 
hobbyists. I have no idea what usual numbers are, but my guess is one does 
not bring back more than 10 pairs of a single species; on the other hand, 
importers can easily sell over 10 pairs of that specific "location".

So that is going to create a lot of "locations" and some people will freak 
out when their beloved Oto becomes Otocinclos affinis AD 2007/07/30; and 
many will drop the code if it serves no purpose for them, and that is fine.

Slapping codes on fish is not a huge underaking, but does require some 
effort. I would like to see that happen, but would it generate enough added 
sales to justify the effort? Another question is how ready are dealers to 
separate last month's leftovers from this month's new arrivals.

cheers
wm_crash, the friendly hooligan
AKA #08840, SAA #162, HOOLIGAN #1
Wilmington, DE

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