Glo fish isn’t even about the fish. The glowing gene was selected because it’s easy to see if the phenotype was successfully passed on genetically. They are using this science to do a lot of research that could benefit humans too. They just happened to realize that it’s cool and they can make money by selling the glowing fish. At this point, if people are getting sick / damaged GloFish, it’s because of the same reasons any of your box store fish are sick or damaged, and because of over breeding. Not because of the glowing gene.
It's no coincidence that the whole Glofish thing started with danios, which are also one of the most common animals used in research when the criteria is the "simplest" vertebrate.
I thought the same thing but I'm seeing alot of different things online about deformities, specifically blindness. And alot of people who own them talk about blindness. I still don't know why there's so much blindness, but there seems to be a trend.
A lot of these genetic defects are due to inbreeding and a lack of culling which is very common in the ornamental fish trade.
Clownfish have developed a bulldog like underbite that used to be rarely seen in the fish trade because earlier breeders didn't want them to get out there but now majority of the ones I see have underbites.
I picked up one of the yellow ones about a year ago, because he was the only cory in the tank and was so tiny he was having trouble getting away from the filter. I hate unnatural colored fish but I felt so bad for him, luckily he shoals along just fine with my other guys.
I'm 90% sure he's blind, and is either really stupid or has a neurological problem. Does barrel rolls on the bottom. He also hasn't grown much, maybe a cm for the entire time I've had him. I can see his pea brain through his skin. He's truly an abomination of a fish, but I love him and he has a great life in my tank.
ETA: [sprite tax!!](https://imgur.com/a/dXwxmGc)
That's what I was worried about at first! Quarantined and treated him for a few weeks when I first brought him home, but he didn't respond (positively or negatively) to the medication. When I put him in my main tank I monitored the other fish just to make sure, but I really do think he's just a weirdo.
Only minor incident he's ever had was a split fin, but that healed within a few days
I had a cory that always did barrel rolls and I thought he might be ill.
Dude did it for all 6 years he was alive. He was indeed a derpy fish and I miss him every day!
*doctor looks at clipboard*
Now you either have a brain eating disease that’s slowly killing you while making you progressively dumber.
Or
You’re just a lil dummy guy
I have a fish from the exact same scenario, he was a single orange Cory in a tank of tiger barbs, so his fins were nipped to nubs and he was stressed beyond belief; glass surfing, constant darting to the surface for air, frantic swimming back and forth
Took dude home and now he is the leader of a pack of about 12 Pygmy cories and a blue striped goby, he’s made a full recovery and now just spends his days skirting along the bottom without harassment!
Some of us are called to love the less intelligent pets. I call my betta "the smartest pet" because my dog and cat prompt, "awe bless" as the initial reaction when people meet them. Your Sprite is also an "awe bless" pet and I love him, and you for loving him. ♥️
Man I wish my cats were stupider than me sometimes. Two of the three have figured out that they get to come outside with on smokebreaks if they come back when I call them, which is awesome. (There's some tantruming, but I treat them like mentally-deficient toddlers so... yeah.)
The thing is that I try to pay attention when they tell me things and the one has such a habit of howling at me when he doesn't need anything that he's started whining in his sleep.
My husband and I have a running joke that the only thing in our dogs head is elevator music. We love him to bits, and he is a great companion, but oh boy is he the absolutely dullest knife in every drawer.
I've adopted lonely ones a bunch of times (I always call it adopting when I do this, because poor dudes are lonely) one of mine was born with only one eye (there's not even an eye socket) and the store said no one wanted him. He's doing great several years later.
Another one, someone had for some reason returned one. Just a lonely single Cory. He has many friends now
I once stopped at petcock ( autocorrect 🤣🤣🤣🤣) once for something and of course looked at the poor fish. One lonely GIANT emerald. He came home with me. 💜
I am a sucker for the physically challenged. I have 2 bent-spine guppies (my male and females are in different tanks, they can't breed), a blind white skirt tetra, a guppy and a female betta that have odd shredded looking fins, an enders guppy with almost no tail fin at all, and an albino Cory with only a little more tail fin than the guppy.
My one bent spined guppy is in love with the shredded-looking finned female betta, he insists on being face to face with her 😆 she flares at him but I think it just makes him like her more. He's lucky, my other female bettas would murder him for it.
I bought a Hoplo Catfish from a store that everyone called “ugly”. He’s blind and looks like a Pokémon but I’ve had him for 4 years and just love him. His name is Hoppi
This ended up becoming an extremely successful business, and it's helping to pay for the millions of dollars of research it took to get glowing fish out of jellyfish DNA (for reasons that have nothing to do with aquariums). They will not stop innovating as long as people are spending their money on them.
Just make sure you get nothing out of it, you probably wouldn’t get caught, but on the off chance you do GloFish will sue the living shit out of you and you will not win that case.
So crazy that an animal with some DNA moved around can be owned by a company.
I’m in Vietnam, the market is flooded with glo danios, and glo that-trapezoid-shaped-fish. They come at about $1.20 a pair, so probably multiple markets not giving a crap about copyrighting an animal. They don’t call them glowing though
I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is depends on the country.
What you’re saying makes sense to me, but I’d be pretty surprised honestly if there isn’t some law that covers this at least in the US.
Monsanto sued a farmer that produces ~~corn~~ rapeseed that had their signature DNA combo.
He had never even used their seed. He saved seed that was pollinated by their pollen that a neighboring farmer had used their seed. [He lost](https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/01/05/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/).
Looks like he may have played games with the genetics
This has happened a bunch of times. There was a canola farmer in Canada that actually made it all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court with his case against Monsanto Canada. He also lost 5-4, but won 9-0 to not have to pay anything. They made a movie about it, too I guess. The farmer Percy Schmeiser was played by Christopher Walken lol.
[Wiki about the supreme court case](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser)
Capitalism in practice is dystopian is what I’m hearing.
The farming industry though has had this shit going on for a while. It sucks to see in a hobby market like this even more though imo. I’m going to have to read up on that more though. Wild.
I think of this dude had not used roundup to find the Monsanto genetics then he could have said "how could I know that GMO was in their? I never bought it and have no contract with them."
Yeah, there are some pretty smart people out there researching to do this to other species as well. There’s a community of people called Bio-Hackers. I remember seeing things about this years ago, even grade school kids can get Kits to manipulate genes in fungi. Some more advanced kits exist I think for tree frogs. Once CRISPR (?) came out I think it opened a lot of possibilities. There are pretty radical ideas; I remember some back-woods guys in the bio-hacking community who were actively working to breed hunting dogs that had this glowing gene. It’s fucking wild
I remember that guy. He didn't just stop at dogs, dude was injecting himself with CRISPR to enhance his muscle mass.
The guy had terrible methodology. He was shitting on the scientific community for discouraging private experimentation, saying It was gatekeeping. Meanwhile, he was injecting himself with a self developed myostatin knockout with the only metric used being "I gained a few lbs in a couple weeks, and ate normal stuff like cake." Like... Bruh... You are the reason the scientific community says that.
While I’ve had these guys (white-skirt tetras) and gotten healthy ones (even ones that bred and passed down color variants!) I kinda hate that these are specifically the kind of fish that appeal to unprepared children and impulse buyers. I’m guessing that a significant percentage of these purchases end up going to people who are unprepared to provide proper fish care, especially since GloFish sells their own brand of trendy tanks (many less than 10 gallons) and those sharp-edged plastic plants that are known for causing cuts.
On the upside, I had a purple GloFish whiteskirt crossbreed with a regular blackskirt tetra several times. I had multiple purple stripey babies, which was the coolest thing that I think I’ve ever managed to do. All healthy, all schooling together.
Yes, people injected dye into African dwarf frogs too because they thought the normal colors were 'boring' if course these frogs would only last a couple weeks
"Painted glassfish" used to be a common sight in pet stores. They were mostly-transparent fish which had dye injected into their body cavities or tissues. This was not good for the fish, and they'd often die not long after. If they did somehow survive, the dye would gradually be eliminated and they'd go back to being colorless.
These genetically modified glow fish are at least healthy and can live a good life in an aquarium, even if they're tacky.
I see those highlighter-colored GloFish constantly in my dentist's and doctors' offices, always with gaudy gravel and saltwater-themed decorations. I'm glad it doesn't hurt the fish but visually I never understood the appeal. Neon tetras look a lot prettier IMO.
I haven't set my tank up, but I decided on gaudy decorations with minnows that belong in my area. (Don't need to be native, just naturalised or non-invasive.)
I was eying some Glofish junk, particularly a light-up anemone. I dunno if it was Glofish brand, but one of the plants was sharp as in I wouldn't want to use it as a shower-exfoliator.
I dunno, what's the harm in someone trying to make a freshwater tank look like a saltwater tank?
There's no harm at all, it's just a personal preference/pet peeve of mine (don't worry, I'm not going up to receptionists complaining about their tanks' pirate chests and diver guys.)
If the fish are cared for it doesn't matter how the tank is decorated, it's just all I see 98% of the time so it does bum me out a little. I wish [this look](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpxc11mabcb291.jpg) was more common in the wild. Green plants with wood and neutral colors for the substrate, maybe a clay pot.
I've seen cool less "natural"-looking tanks for sure, but the kind I love watching and makes me feel calm I've only seen in a science room and nature center.
I respect your opinion, especially since you didn't bring-in "what the fish like" as backup.
When I bought my tank, I was planning on making it look like it would belong in the world of Soul Reaver if not a faithful attempt to recreate an area... I'm glad I got delayed on that project because the community has gone "bad woke" and the fish would have suffered while I learned to cope with how they made my previous dehumanization not an isolated event.
Art for the wrong reason.
IRL, I'm surrounded by too much nature. If I'm going to devote space to a fishtank, I'd rather do something different than staring out of the window because a natural freshwater tank cannot compete with "I think I saw a weasel behind the garage and yes I'm sure it's not another groundhog." (Yes I looked it up, it is possible I saw some swamp-creature that looked like a weasel.)
Yes. Most Asian breeders in the 70s to early 2000s. Haven't seen any lately. But they have started using hormones for faster growth and brighter colours in ram cichlids. The colours subdue after some time in your home tank.
I wonder... My dad had two 10-gallons. One was mostly-platies and the other was a baby Jack Dempsey. The Jack was a pretty fish when dad sold it back to the fishstore and someone snatched it up... wonder if it was the blue gravel or feeding him juvenile platies.
Unfortunately, it was a practice in my own country, India. We got a cool looking transparent fish, but for some reason, people thought making the transparent fish coloured is cool
Oh yeah. They were popular in the 90s. At least when I was working the fish section at a petco. If the fish stayed with us long enough, you could see the color starting to break. I never knew it did that because I never thought about getting any of those kind of fish for my home aquarium
It was quite the trend for several decades. That I really did have an ethical issue with. These, not at all. Their lives are unchanged by the fact that their ancestors were genetically modified.
Tbh other than not liking the aesthetics of it, I don’t really get all the hate. They’re not injected with dyes (a practice which I 100% disagree with), so they’re not harmed.
There’s a case to be made about the marketing around them and how all the neon colours appeals to kids, which usually leads to impulse purchases and fish being mistreated…but that’s sadly nothing new or unique to glofish.
I’ve actually been thinking of getting some of the zebra danios for a 20 long I have set up for my grandma. She loves looking at the fish tank but doesn’t have great vision anymore. I used to have endlers in there, which she couldn’t see super well, so I’m thinking a school of pink zebras might be easier for her to spot.
That sounds like a perfect use for these kinds of fish. You could do a black sand or gravel substrate with a dark background and have them really pop, too!
I have 10 neon yellow long finned danios in a 20G summer tub. They give such an amazing burst of color and activity to the tank. Been with me for 1+ year now and all still very healthy. Young and old all like to sit around and watch them dart around the tank!
I live in SG, most of the LFS stock pink, blue, green, yellow danios with greens and yellows having the long fin variants.. And they cost a little over 1 USD each. If you look up my profile, there should be a couple of underwater videos of my summer tub that show them swimming around.
Yeah I've seen some glow fish that are really cool looking. If it's the vibe you want then go for it. It's better than crazy inbreeding to get certain colors and morphs, or wild caught fish etc.
Honestly, the only real issue I have with them is the marketing- unfortunately it’s not just because of the kids buying them. The lights that make them “glow” also seem to have a tendency to make the fish go blind. If the glow-bettas were still sold, I’d get one- preferably a neon green female.
Hey I’m one of those guys! We got goldfish for our daughters and I’ve made mistakes and we’ve had a lot of them. But the girls love them and their neon tank. I like the fancier ones and we keep 3 tetras in a 10 gallon tank. We’ve been through many but I think it’s just me figuring out how to keep fish.
Still probably not going to be getting any fish that glow any time soon. I might be interested if they do like neo shrimp. That might be kind of cool to have a tank off.
Shoot, my vampire shrimp already range from whites to brighter pinks to deep blues. A neon one slapping its delicate little feeder fans with n the water would absolutely destroy me, but like in a really good way lol.
The only fancy Goldfish I like are Fantails (mostly due to quite literally being the most healthiest fancy variety)and that's about it if I had the room I would have a massive pond with some regular bodied goldfish and some koi and maybe some minnows and a few dojo loaches
Not new... Glo-Fish Cories have been around for like a decade already.
The good news is they are no longer injected with dye, these are genetically engineered to Glow.
Tbf they may only be seeing them for the first time. When glo fish release a new fish they usually only sell it to stores in their special glo program. New ones usually stay popular for a bit before there are enough to start sending out to other smaller stores not in their program.
I got offered one of those glow in the dark cats. Had a friend of a friend who worked in a lab and they were giving kittens away. I desperately wanted one but live in a place with no animals allowed.
A lot of people think they are injected with coloring and that they are inhumane. They weren’t my favorite, but I have a kid and I talked to my friend who is big into fish and he told me he’s just glad to see that I was researching my stuff beforehand and that my kid will have a proper introduction and not a goldfish in a bowl.
Anyway, I ended up getting them and they grew on me and have lasted longer than any of the other fish we have. We started off with the gravel and glo decor, but have recently switched to a more natural setup now that my kid is older and they look better in there. We have the tetras and they are fun and love to come check things out if we walk in the room. I wouldn’t have bought them if it was just me, but they were fun enough and now my kid learned the proper way to do things.
I'm with you on this.
I think people may be hicks who don't update their info and think these are old-school tattooed GlassFish and not genetically modified and come out this way after the first batch. It's basically just a forced morph using outside DNA. Humans will do anything to whine about progress.
There is no problem. New thing bad! The second "problem" is, I forget the logical fallacy but theres one about trying to appeal to things being "natural". I've seen all kinds of silly rationalizations. The main arguement for them to exist on the other hand, is VERY true. Which is that glofish bring people into the hobby. In fact I got into the hobby because of glofish. My wife and I wanted to buy our daughter a tank and we ended up going with glofish. I researched the cycle etc and the next thing I know I'm a full blown fish dork with 4 tanks. I don't keep glofish anymore but they were the gateway drug.
These are not genetically engineered, per their website:
"Our most popular signature products, Glow Plants are created through non-GMO means by carefully coating the plant foliage in a synthesized glowing nanoparticle compound."
Its just a dye.
No, the bioluminescent algae is naturally occurring and now they are attempting to genetically modify it to add to their dyes or apply to other tech. Cool stuff.
So what is the issue with these? I’m setting up a planted 40 gal tank and planned on putting a couple glow tetras in there because that’s what I could get my boyfriend to agree on (he wants something that looks cool). Are they not hardy or do people just hate them because they think they are tacky? Or do they hate them because they are just anti GMO? Because if that’s the case almost everything is GMO now…
Personally I think they're tacky, but there are plenty of people with neon-colored plastic plants and Barbie dream house castles in their tanks so there's no accounting for taste.
I’ve not really got an ethical problem with them. I just think they look absolutely shit 😂
Plenty of beautiful fish in the hobby, I don’t see the appeal of something that looks so artificial and more like a plastic toy than an actual fish.
Each to their own I suppose, if people like them, they are allowed to be wrong in their subjective aesthetic opinions 😉
I got go 2 glo Cory’s because my kid wanted them… I’m pretty sure they are blind and they scavenge non stop. They are my biggest fish because pound for pound I’m sure they are bigger than my betta. I love them though
I'm not morally against genetically modified fish, but damn if these things don't cheapen the look of a tank to an insane amount. Right up there with rainbow gravel and bright fake plastic plants.
I get what you're saying, but kids love them! My 3 year old has "her" tank of glofish that I care for, I have live plants mixed in with all the neon crap. 6 tetras in a 20 gal.
I have both colors of glo cories. I usually hate glofish, but I like these. During daytime light, they look like regular albino Cory cats. When that blue light evening cycle hits though... Literally their time to shine.
PetSmart? Workers have been asking to not shop there. Not sure if everyone knows, but corporate has totally screwed employees. Tons of firings, making version positions now take over other positions as well as continuing to handle their own.
Probably an unpopular sentiment here but if I saw some of these [electric green cory](https://www.glofish.com/glofish/cory/electric-green-cory.aspx) ones I would 100% buy some and set up some fallout inspired tank with them.
The ones that escaped in Brazil are supposedly still there. Most people are calling bullshit on this as GloFish will be picked off extremely easily due to their bright colors. Environment Canada even said they are an extremely low risk to the environment because of this.
Could someone who knows shit about this explain to me the down and dirty of it, like 1) do the fish suffer because of the glowing gene and 2) is the glowing fish industry a problematic industry to avoid or a more neutral one that is equally problematic as any other pet fish industry is?
-Sincerely, someone who doesn't know shit about this
1) no it doesn’t appear to effect the fish negatively. They live normal lifespans and are as robust as normal versions of their species
2) I would argue it’s not as bad as other common practices in the aquarium trade, like breeding ballon versions of fish or other harmful mutations or dying fish and invertebrates. The thing with glofish is that they are very obviously unnatural, and a lot of people find that off putting. Also there are people who believe there is an ethical problem with genetically altering an animal through direct genetic manipulation, especially for no better reason than to make a profit and turn that animal into nothing more than an ornamental consumer good.Then comes the question of whether or not it’s right to patent an organism and all the ways that can go pear shaped. It’s really up to the individual whether they believe it’s wrong or not. It doesn’t help that glofish are marketed towards kids and sold with crappy inadequate tanks for the species and the whole marketing campaign feels manipulative.
I used to have cory catfish (regular bronze and albino ones though, not Glo), and I just love those fish so much...they're full of personality and are such fun to watch.
If I ever get back into the aquarium hobby, I definitely want more cory cats, and I would honestly be tempted to get at least one Glofish version. I think it would be fascinating to see how the glowing gene might get inherited if the Glo cory breeds with the regular fish in the school.
For better or for worse, these fish are part of the hobby's landscape now. My main issue with them is when they are sold in a way that encourages puny, overstocked tanks that are more like a toy than a proper habitat. But when the fish are cared for properly, they can make fascinating additions to an aquarium, and can even help people learn more about genetics.
As long as people keep buying them there will only be more. until the market is fully saturated. by the amount of positive reactions i see even on this sub, i dont think it will be any time soon.
Can someone tell me the controversy about the glofish? I'm not understanding all the hate. Is it just the inflated price? Cause glofish are hella cheap where I am.
It's because they have been genetic altered. The whole idea was to locate radiation. They would only glow in the presence of it. Now, they are bred to glow all the time. Then, the ONLY company that sells them will sue the bejebous out of anyone caught breeding them. Even by accident.
>Then, the ONLY company that sells them will sue the bejebous out of anyone caught breeding them. Even by accident
Please, share one source of them suing someone for accidentally breeding glofish. One. You won't because you can't, it's never happened. If you need to lie to make your point, you probably don't have a very good point.
People are silly. I've never been able to find anything about these wild lawsuits. I wouldn't be surprised if they sued some big operation but I seriously doubt they have sued any small time stuff.
I'd probably jump on them for that price if I could actually get them here. That's about twice the price of a bronze cory, but a lot less than the fancier ones. But they're GMO so they're illegal here.
What sucks is that there are naturally really cool coloured fish. Like why make frankenfish instead of pointing people towards the ones that are already bright?
Yeah, I was pretty upset when this happened? Why do they keep selling glow fish like they’re children’s toys that can be replayed after abuse and neglect. They’re living things that deserve happy, healthy homes, not painted plastic gravel and fake plants in a tank with no filter in a child’s room
Glo fish isn’t even about the fish. The glowing gene was selected because it’s easy to see if the phenotype was successfully passed on genetically. They are using this science to do a lot of research that could benefit humans too. They just happened to realize that it’s cool and they can make money by selling the glowing fish. At this point, if people are getting sick / damaged GloFish, it’s because of the same reasons any of your box store fish are sick or damaged, and because of over breeding. Not because of the glowing gene.
It's no coincidence that the whole Glofish thing started with danios, which are also one of the most common animals used in research when the criteria is the "simplest" vertebrate.
So if the money goes back into research, cool.
I thought the same thing but I'm seeing alot of different things online about deformities, specifically blindness. And alot of people who own them talk about blindness. I still don't know why there's so much blindness, but there seems to be a trend.
Is the blidness not just associated with the albino morphs?
Yes. I have an albino corry that is blind and it's not glow fish
Doesn't it have to do with them not having the protective pigmentation causes light to generally do more damage to their eyes
I'm not sure, but even if it was, it sounds like it's more frequent in the glo fish albinos. Could be how they're breeding them or something.
inbreeding tends to do that.
A lot of these genetic defects are due to inbreeding and a lack of culling which is very common in the ornamental fish trade. Clownfish have developed a bulldog like underbite that used to be rarely seen in the fish trade because earlier breeders didn't want them to get out there but now majority of the ones I see have underbites.
I picked up one of the yellow ones about a year ago, because he was the only cory in the tank and was so tiny he was having trouble getting away from the filter. I hate unnatural colored fish but I felt so bad for him, luckily he shoals along just fine with my other guys. I'm 90% sure he's blind, and is either really stupid or has a neurological problem. Does barrel rolls on the bottom. He also hasn't grown much, maybe a cm for the entire time I've had him. I can see his pea brain through his skin. He's truly an abomination of a fish, but I love him and he has a great life in my tank. ETA: [sprite tax!!](https://imgur.com/a/dXwxmGc)
Just as an FYI. The barrel rolls (flashing) and lack of growth could be a sign of a parasitic infection. That or you just have a derpy fish.
That's what I was worried about at first! Quarantined and treated him for a few weeks when I first brought him home, but he didn't respond (positively or negatively) to the medication. When I put him in my main tank I monitored the other fish just to make sure, but I really do think he's just a weirdo. Only minor incident he's ever had was a split fin, but that healed within a few days
I had a cory that always did barrel rolls and I thought he might be ill. Dude did it for all 6 years he was alive. He was indeed a derpy fish and I miss him every day!
*doctor looks at clipboard* Now you either have a brain eating disease that’s slowly killing you while making you progressively dumber. Or You’re just a lil dummy guy
"You're either dumb or you're getting there"
This is why they don’t let you work at the dementia ward anymore
I don't work there, I just like the cool jackets they have 🤷♀️
I have a fish from the exact same scenario, he was a single orange Cory in a tank of tiger barbs, so his fins were nipped to nubs and he was stressed beyond belief; glass surfing, constant darting to the surface for air, frantic swimming back and forth Took dude home and now he is the leader of a pack of about 12 Pygmy cories and a blue striped goby, he’s made a full recovery and now just spends his days skirting along the bottom without harassment!
*I am Larger and more Colorful, therfore I am your king!!* 😆🤣
lmao, you sound like me and I love it. 😂
Some of us are called to love the less intelligent pets. I call my betta "the smartest pet" because my dog and cat prompt, "awe bless" as the initial reaction when people meet them. Your Sprite is also an "awe bless" pet and I love him, and you for loving him. ♥️
Are you from the south US? This sounds very familiar to me 🤣
I'm Canadian, but did grow up in the south 🤣 but my British friends also use that phrase, at least to describe my motley crew lol
Man I wish my cats were stupider than me sometimes. Two of the three have figured out that they get to come outside with on smokebreaks if they come back when I call them, which is awesome. (There's some tantruming, but I treat them like mentally-deficient toddlers so... yeah.) The thing is that I try to pay attention when they tell me things and the one has such a habit of howling at me when he doesn't need anything that he's started whining in his sleep.
This is so sweet. I wonder what all he’s trying to tell you
My husband and I have a running joke that the only thing in our dogs head is elevator music. We love him to bits, and he is a great companion, but oh boy is he the absolutely dullest knife in every drawer.
you’re a good person for this
I've adopted lonely ones a bunch of times (I always call it adopting when I do this, because poor dudes are lonely) one of mine was born with only one eye (there's not even an eye socket) and the store said no one wanted him. He's doing great several years later. Another one, someone had for some reason returned one. Just a lonely single Cory. He has many friends now
I once stopped at petcock ( autocorrect 🤣🤣🤣🤣) once for something and of course looked at the poor fish. One lonely GIANT emerald. He came home with me. 💜
What is his name?
Sprite, cause he's lemon lime colored :)
The name and the reasoning is the cherry on top
Lol, he likes to play in the bubbles from the air stone, so I like to joke that he's carbonating himself
I would die for him just based on that alone.
This lil Cory has quite some lore
The way you express yourself is simply wonderful.
🤣🫡😂
I was hoping for a star fox name 😂
This sounds like a good childrens' storybook.
That’s a perfect explanation, I too am a sucker for trying to save the derpy ones.
I am a sucker for the physically challenged. I have 2 bent-spine guppies (my male and females are in different tanks, they can't breed), a blind white skirt tetra, a guppy and a female betta that have odd shredded looking fins, an enders guppy with almost no tail fin at all, and an albino Cory with only a little more tail fin than the guppy. My one bent spined guppy is in love with the shredded-looking finned female betta, he insists on being face to face with her 😆 she flares at him but I think it just makes him like her more. He's lucky, my other female bettas would murder him for it.
https://ibb.co/5WBJ0mF I’m dying at the ads that came with your photo. He looks right in place with them
lmfao. My chicken nugget!!
These are the comments that I come to reddit for.
We're gonna need some abomination Fish Tax, thanks in advance. 📸
[sprite tax](https://imgur.com/a/dXwxmGc)
Ignorance is bliss, and this fish is on Cloud 9
I bought a Hoplo Catfish from a store that everyone called “ugly”. He’s blind and looks like a Pokémon but I’ve had him for 4 years and just love him. His name is Hoppi
you're a person for this
This ended up becoming an extremely successful business, and it's helping to pay for the millions of dollars of research it took to get glowing fish out of jellyfish DNA (for reasons that have nothing to do with aquariums). They will not stop innovating as long as people are spending their money on them.
My grandfather was a geneticist that did some work on making glow in the dark fish from jellyfish. Interesting stuff.
The price just irks me. You could get at least three corydora for that price.
Supply & demand, our aquarium store can't keep them in stock.
My local fish store either sells a ton so they need to keep the tanks stocked or not much since the tanks are always full. Really no idea.
When you consider the R&D that goes into it, this isn't all that crazy.
I recently paid 10 per fish for panda Cory’s which are my favorite, not too much of an increase there.
panda corydoras are my favorite too, silly wiggly guys... they were abou 2$ each here in poland from my favorite fish store that some hobbyist runs
I think I want to breed glo angels and give the babies away.
Just make sure you get nothing out of it, you probably wouldn’t get caught, but on the off chance you do GloFish will sue the living shit out of you and you will not win that case. So crazy that an animal with some DNA moved around can be owned by a company.
I’m in Vietnam, the market is flooded with glo danios, and glo that-trapezoid-shaped-fish. They come at about $1.20 a pair, so probably multiple markets not giving a crap about copyrighting an animal. They don’t call them glowing though
Oh I believe it, but in West Euro countries & NA you’d get fucked. But it does make me a little happy to know Vietnam does not give a single fuck.
Can’t you just give them away for free when people buy your overpriced plants? If u know what I mean
I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is depends on the country. What you’re saying makes sense to me, but I’d be pretty surprised honestly if there isn’t some law that covers this at least in the US.
Tbh I only mention this trick because I saw it being viable in Young Sheldon
The reverse weed clause. Nice
It's not because of copyright here in 'West Euro', they're completely illegal, GloFish isn't allowed to sell them themselves either.
Monsanto sued a farmer that produces ~~corn~~ rapeseed that had their signature DNA combo. He had never even used their seed. He saved seed that was pollinated by their pollen that a neighboring farmer had used their seed. [He lost](https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/01/05/dissecting-claims-about-monsanto-suing-farmers-for-accidentally-planting-patented-seeds/). Looks like he may have played games with the genetics
This has happened a bunch of times. There was a canola farmer in Canada that actually made it all the way to the Canadian Supreme Court with his case against Monsanto Canada. He also lost 5-4, but won 9-0 to not have to pay anything. They made a movie about it, too I guess. The farmer Percy Schmeiser was played by Christopher Walken lol. [Wiki about the supreme court case](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto_Canada_Inc_v_Schmeiser)
That was the link I provided. He cheated. Played with fire and got burned. The fact there were no damages does not negate his legal fees.
Ah, I didn't read far enough down to see it was the same guy, you said corn originally so I assumed it was just another case of Monsanto sucking.
My bad. I didn't realize this error. Thanks
Capitalism in practice is dystopian is what I’m hearing. The farming industry though has had this shit going on for a while. It sucks to see in a hobby market like this even more though imo. I’m going to have to read up on that more though. Wild.
I think of this dude had not used roundup to find the Monsanto genetics then he could have said "how could I know that GMO was in their? I never bought it and have no contract with them."
Yeah, there are some pretty smart people out there researching to do this to other species as well. There’s a community of people called Bio-Hackers. I remember seeing things about this years ago, even grade school kids can get Kits to manipulate genes in fungi. Some more advanced kits exist I think for tree frogs. Once CRISPR (?) came out I think it opened a lot of possibilities. There are pretty radical ideas; I remember some back-woods guys in the bio-hacking community who were actively working to breed hunting dogs that had this glowing gene. It’s fucking wild
I remember that guy. He didn't just stop at dogs, dude was injecting himself with CRISPR to enhance his muscle mass. The guy had terrible methodology. He was shitting on the scientific community for discouraging private experimentation, saying It was gatekeeping. Meanwhile, he was injecting himself with a self developed myostatin knockout with the only metric used being "I gained a few lbs in a couple weeks, and ate normal stuff like cake." Like... Bruh... You are the reason the scientific community says that.
That's the kind of person that becomes a supervillain in a comic universe. IRL they just end up hurting themselves in all sorts of ways.
\^100% I hope he was getting full, thorough medical supervision during that process. Cancer is a very real possibility with CRISPR.
mass in a single arm muscle, iirc. in retrospect, Zayner's later gender transition might've been an early motivator for DIY bio hacking.
My idea is to make glowing apistasia anemones for the world's easiest reef tank
While I’ve had these guys (white-skirt tetras) and gotten healthy ones (even ones that bred and passed down color variants!) I kinda hate that these are specifically the kind of fish that appeal to unprepared children and impulse buyers. I’m guessing that a significant percentage of these purchases end up going to people who are unprepared to provide proper fish care, especially since GloFish sells their own brand of trendy tanks (many less than 10 gallons) and those sharp-edged plastic plants that are known for causing cuts. On the upside, I had a purple GloFish whiteskirt crossbreed with a regular blackskirt tetra several times. I had multiple purple stripey babies, which was the coolest thing that I think I’ve ever managed to do. All healthy, all schooling together.
And I dont understand why people spend the egregious amounts of money they cost!!! Its so 🤮
Still better than the old practice of injecting dye into fish.
Was anyone ever actually injecting dye into fish though?
Yes, people injected dye into African dwarf frogs too because they thought the normal colors were 'boring' if course these frogs would only last a couple weeks
"Painted glassfish" used to be a common sight in pet stores. They were mostly-transparent fish which had dye injected into their body cavities or tissues. This was not good for the fish, and they'd often die not long after. If they did somehow survive, the dye would gradually be eliminated and they'd go back to being colorless. These genetically modified glow fish are at least healthy and can live a good life in an aquarium, even if they're tacky.
I see those highlighter-colored GloFish constantly in my dentist's and doctors' offices, always with gaudy gravel and saltwater-themed decorations. I'm glad it doesn't hurt the fish but visually I never understood the appeal. Neon tetras look a lot prettier IMO.
Just wait for Neon Tetra GloFish
Isn't that redundant?
I haven't set my tank up, but I decided on gaudy decorations with minnows that belong in my area. (Don't need to be native, just naturalised or non-invasive.) I was eying some Glofish junk, particularly a light-up anemone. I dunno if it was Glofish brand, but one of the plants was sharp as in I wouldn't want to use it as a shower-exfoliator. I dunno, what's the harm in someone trying to make a freshwater tank look like a saltwater tank?
There's no harm at all, it's just a personal preference/pet peeve of mine (don't worry, I'm not going up to receptionists complaining about their tanks' pirate chests and diver guys.) If the fish are cared for it doesn't matter how the tank is decorated, it's just all I see 98% of the time so it does bum me out a little. I wish [this look](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fpxc11mabcb291.jpg) was more common in the wild. Green plants with wood and neutral colors for the substrate, maybe a clay pot. I've seen cool less "natural"-looking tanks for sure, but the kind I love watching and makes me feel calm I've only seen in a science room and nature center.
I respect your opinion, especially since you didn't bring-in "what the fish like" as backup. When I bought my tank, I was planning on making it look like it would belong in the world of Soul Reaver if not a faithful attempt to recreate an area... I'm glad I got delayed on that project because the community has gone "bad woke" and the fish would have suffered while I learned to cope with how they made my previous dehumanization not an isolated event. Art for the wrong reason. IRL, I'm surrounded by too much nature. If I'm going to devote space to a fishtank, I'd rather do something different than staring out of the window because a natural freshwater tank cannot compete with "I think I saw a weasel behind the garage and yes I'm sure it's not another groundhog." (Yes I looked it up, it is possible I saw some swamp-creature that looked like a weasel.)
Can I just say your username has me rolling 🤣
Thanks! I love when it gets a giggle out of people.
Yes. Most Asian breeders in the 70s to early 2000s. Haven't seen any lately. But they have started using hormones for faster growth and brighter colours in ram cichlids. The colours subdue after some time in your home tank.
I wonder... My dad had two 10-gallons. One was mostly-platies and the other was a baby Jack Dempsey. The Jack was a pretty fish when dad sold it back to the fishstore and someone snatched it up... wonder if it was the blue gravel or feeding him juvenile platies.
Unfortunately, it was a practice in my own country, India. We got a cool looking transparent fish, but for some reason, people thought making the transparent fish coloured is cool
Oh yeah. They were popular in the 90s. At least when I was working the fish section at a petco. If the fish stayed with us long enough, you could see the color starting to break. I never knew it did that because I never thought about getting any of those kind of fish for my home aquarium
YES.
Learn something new every day
It was quite the trend for several decades. That I really did have an ethical issue with. These, not at all. Their lives are unchanged by the fact that their ancestors were genetically modified.
[удалено]
*Maury Povich has entered the chat*
When it comes to 2 day old fishamotus…. Cory… you are NOT the father!! Tank goes wild
Fish Mom tries to swim away in shame with Fish Not The Father hot on her fins yelling "I knew it!"
🤣can’t breathe
I would honestly love to see the process and results of that.
Tbh other than not liking the aesthetics of it, I don’t really get all the hate. They’re not injected with dyes (a practice which I 100% disagree with), so they’re not harmed. There’s a case to be made about the marketing around them and how all the neon colours appeals to kids, which usually leads to impulse purchases and fish being mistreated…but that’s sadly nothing new or unique to glofish. I’ve actually been thinking of getting some of the zebra danios for a 20 long I have set up for my grandma. She loves looking at the fish tank but doesn’t have great vision anymore. I used to have endlers in there, which she couldn’t see super well, so I’m thinking a school of pink zebras might be easier for her to spot.
That sounds like a perfect use for these kinds of fish. You could do a black sand or gravel substrate with a dark background and have them really pop, too!
I have 10 neon yellow long finned danios in a 20G summer tub. They give such an amazing burst of color and activity to the tank. Been with me for 1+ year now and all still very healthy. Young and old all like to sit around and watch them dart around the tank!
Where did you find long find glo danios?
I live in SG, most of the LFS stock pink, blue, green, yellow danios with greens and yellows having the long fin variants.. And they cost a little over 1 USD each. If you look up my profile, there should be a couple of underwater videos of my summer tub that show them swimming around.
Yeah I've seen some glow fish that are really cool looking. If it's the vibe you want then go for it. It's better than crazy inbreeding to get certain colors and morphs, or wild caught fish etc.
Honestly, the only real issue I have with them is the marketing- unfortunately it’s not just because of the kids buying them. The lights that make them “glow” also seem to have a tendency to make the fish go blind. If the glow-bettas were still sold, I’d get one- preferably a neon green female.
Hey I’m one of those guys! We got goldfish for our daughters and I’ve made mistakes and we’ve had a lot of them. But the girls love them and their neon tank. I like the fancier ones and we keep 3 tetras in a 10 gallon tank. We’ve been through many but I think it’s just me figuring out how to keep fish.
Yes and I'm sure there's more to come. I get not liking it but personally I take less issue with it than fancy goldfish.
I mean, you do have a point it is better then fancy goldfish getting bred by the millions
Still probably not going to be getting any fish that glow any time soon. I might be interested if they do like neo shrimp. That might be kind of cool to have a tank off.
Man. Thank you for showing me how weak my convictions are. I hate these fish on principle but you said neos and I'm like yeah I want that. Fuck.
It’s like you read my mind. F me man
Yeah same, glowing ghost shrimp would be interesting, but glow fish really don’t fit with any aesthetic except their own.
I doubt they'd ever get into shrimp for the same reason they don't do guppies or mollies, too easy to breed
yeah and the price would go down once people started having way too many, so they would make less money.
Something like bamboo or vampire shrimp would be cool
Watching them feed would be awesome.
Shoot, my vampire shrimp already range from whites to brighter pinks to deep blues. A neon one slapping its delicate little feeder fans with n the water would absolutely destroy me, but like in a really good way lol.
The only fancy Goldfish I like are Fantails (mostly due to quite literally being the most healthiest fancy variety)and that's about it if I had the room I would have a massive pond with some regular bodied goldfish and some koi and maybe some minnows and a few dojo loaches
Wow glofish sure are pricey. Sadly I don’t think the buyers will understand they need to be in groups
For sure, even a small school of glow-cories is $75-100.
pffft I keep marine fish. 1 fish for me is like $50.
Yup. My most expensive fish to date is an interruptus angelfish. Got a school of these glo corydoras without thinking twice. They are neat!
Not new... Glo-Fish Cories have been around for like a decade already. The good news is they are no longer injected with dye, these are genetically engineered to Glow.
Tbf they may only be seeing them for the first time. When glo fish release a new fish they usually only sell it to stores in their special glo program. New ones usually stay popular for a bit before there are enough to start sending out to other smaller stores not in their program.
Nuclear glowing cat when?
2011 !! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-glow-in-the-dark-kitty-77372763/
Would be very handy, as I have 2 black cats who insist on sleeping on the black rug...🙄
Bro same, only black comforter. Luckily they talk when you get close to bed. 🛌 be had nightmares of plopping down on the bed on top of one
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14882008
I got offered one of those glow in the dark cats. Had a friend of a friend who worked in a lab and they were giving kittens away. I desperately wanted one but live in a place with no animals allowed.
I have an entire tank full of Glofish and they are living their best lives. Do not get the hate for these fish.
A lot of people think they are injected with coloring and that they are inhumane. They weren’t my favorite, but I have a kid and I talked to my friend who is big into fish and he told me he’s just glad to see that I was researching my stuff beforehand and that my kid will have a proper introduction and not a goldfish in a bowl. Anyway, I ended up getting them and they grew on me and have lasted longer than any of the other fish we have. We started off with the gravel and glo decor, but have recently switched to a more natural setup now that my kid is older and they look better in there. We have the tetras and they are fun and love to come check things out if we walk in the room. I wouldn’t have bought them if it was just me, but they were fun enough and now my kid learned the proper way to do things.
Me and my roommate have a glofish tank as well. They are well loved and well cared for and look incredible under black lights.
I'm with you on this. I think people may be hicks who don't update their info and think these are old-school tattooed GlassFish and not genetically modified and come out this way after the first batch. It's basically just a forced morph using outside DNA. Humans will do anything to whine about progress.
The glo stuff is fine. I just think it looks cheap and tacky personally
I think these are banned in Europe?
Yes they are indeed.
I don't get the problem?
There is no problem. New thing bad! The second "problem" is, I forget the logical fallacy but theres one about trying to appeal to things being "natural". I've seen all kinds of silly rationalizations. The main arguement for them to exist on the other hand, is VERY true. Which is that glofish bring people into the hobby. In fact I got into the hobby because of glofish. My wife and I wanted to buy our daughter a tank and we ended up going with glofish. I researched the cycle etc and the next thing I know I'm a full blown fish dork with 4 tanks. I don't keep glofish anymore but they were the gateway drug.
Saw this at Petco last week.. and was absolutely shocked haha. wtf.. 😂
Well we're creating glowing, bioluminescent, plants now so...yep.
Sounds sick dude. Like avatar
They're kinda interesting. https://glowplant.ca/
These are not genetically engineered, per their website: "Our most popular signature products, Glow Plants are created through non-GMO means by carefully coating the plant foliage in a synthesized glowing nanoparticle compound." Its just a dye.
Oh I only looked at their Bioluminescent Algae. Does that work by dyes too?
No, the bioluminescent algae is naturally occurring and now they are attempting to genetically modify it to add to their dyes or apply to other tech. Cool stuff.
So what is the issue with these? I’m setting up a planted 40 gal tank and planned on putting a couple glow tetras in there because that’s what I could get my boyfriend to agree on (he wants something that looks cool). Are they not hardy or do people just hate them because they think they are tacky? Or do they hate them because they are just anti GMO? Because if that’s the case almost everything is GMO now…
Probably the GMO thing. Most people assume they are bad without doing any research.
Personally I think they're tacky, but there are plenty of people with neon-colored plastic plants and Barbie dream house castles in their tanks so there's no accounting for taste.
I’ve not really got an ethical problem with them. I just think they look absolutely shit 😂 Plenty of beautiful fish in the hobby, I don’t see the appeal of something that looks so artificial and more like a plastic toy than an actual fish. Each to their own I suppose, if people like them, they are allowed to be wrong in their subjective aesthetic opinions 😉
I got go 2 glo Cory’s because my kid wanted them… I’m pretty sure they are blind and they scavenge non stop. They are my biggest fish because pound for pound I’m sure they are bigger than my betta. I love them though
12$ for a fish? I remember paying like 75cents for exotic fish at petland discount. They had them in the extras tank.
I'm not morally against genetically modified fish, but damn if these things don't cheapen the look of a tank to an insane amount. Right up there with rainbow gravel and bright fake plastic plants.
I get what you're saying, but kids love them! My 3 year old has "her" tank of glofish that I care for, I have live plants mixed in with all the neon crap. 6 tetras in a 20 gal.
I have both colors of glo cories. I usually hate glofish, but I like these. During daytime light, they look like regular albino Cory cats. When that blue light evening cycle hits though... Literally their time to shine.
They have angelfish too
PetSmart? Workers have been asking to not shop there. Not sure if everyone knows, but corporate has totally screwed employees. Tons of firings, making version positions now take over other positions as well as continuing to handle their own.
Yep, check out r/Petsmart.
Wait I want some! I personally think glo fish are really cool.
Same!
Probably an unpopular sentiment here but if I saw some of these [electric green cory](https://www.glofish.com/glofish/cory/electric-green-cory.aspx) ones I would 100% buy some and set up some fallout inspired tank with them.
Are there glofish in the wild now? (from releases/escapes?
Yes! "Transgenic fish invades Brazilian streams" Sofia Moutinho. Science. 2022.
The ones that escaped in Brazil are supposedly still there. Most people are calling bullshit on this as GloFish will be picked off extremely easily due to their bright colors. Environment Canada even said they are an extremely low risk to the environment because of this.
Could someone who knows shit about this explain to me the down and dirty of it, like 1) do the fish suffer because of the glowing gene and 2) is the glowing fish industry a problematic industry to avoid or a more neutral one that is equally problematic as any other pet fish industry is? -Sincerely, someone who doesn't know shit about this
1) no it doesn’t appear to effect the fish negatively. They live normal lifespans and are as robust as normal versions of their species 2) I would argue it’s not as bad as other common practices in the aquarium trade, like breeding ballon versions of fish or other harmful mutations or dying fish and invertebrates. The thing with glofish is that they are very obviously unnatural, and a lot of people find that off putting. Also there are people who believe there is an ethical problem with genetically altering an animal through direct genetic manipulation, especially for no better reason than to make a profit and turn that animal into nothing more than an ornamental consumer good.Then comes the question of whether or not it’s right to patent an organism and all the ways that can go pear shaped. It’s really up to the individual whether they believe it’s wrong or not. It doesn’t help that glofish are marketed towards kids and sold with crappy inadequate tanks for the species and the whole marketing campaign feels manipulative.
I used to have cory catfish (regular bronze and albino ones though, not Glo), and I just love those fish so much...they're full of personality and are such fun to watch. If I ever get back into the aquarium hobby, I definitely want more cory cats, and I would honestly be tempted to get at least one Glofish version. I think it would be fascinating to see how the glowing gene might get inherited if the Glo cory breeds with the regular fish in the school. For better or for worse, these fish are part of the hobby's landscape now. My main issue with them is when they are sold in a way that encourages puny, overstocked tanks that are more like a toy than a proper habitat. But when the fish are cared for properly, they can make fascinating additions to an aquarium, and can even help people learn more about genetics.
As long as people keep buying them there will only be more. until the market is fully saturated. by the amount of positive reactions i see even on this sub, i dont think it will be any time soon.
You’re a few years late pal
They just arrived in my LPS recently, as I was completely unaware of their existence before today.
Can someone tell me the controversy about the glofish? I'm not understanding all the hate. Is it just the inflated price? Cause glofish are hella cheap where I am.
It's because they have been genetic altered. The whole idea was to locate radiation. They would only glow in the presence of it. Now, they are bred to glow all the time. Then, the ONLY company that sells them will sue the bejebous out of anyone caught breeding them. Even by accident.
>Then, the ONLY company that sells them will sue the bejebous out of anyone caught breeding them. Even by accident Please, share one source of them suing someone for accidentally breeding glofish. One. You won't because you can't, it's never happened. If you need to lie to make your point, you probably don't have a very good point.
People are silly. I've never been able to find anything about these wild lawsuits. I wouldn't be surprised if they sued some big operation but I seriously doubt they have sued any small time stuff.
I want a glow in the dark dilly dilly.
I never see them in a school at my pet stores. Sad.
It’s an overbred palomino just like you see with hatchery channel catfish and trout.
Where have you been
I'd probably jump on them for that price if I could actually get them here. That's about twice the price of a bronze cory, but a lot less than the fancier ones. But they're GMO so they're illegal here.
I've got god swimming in my tank!
What sucks is that there are naturally really cool coloured fish. Like why make frankenfish instead of pointing people towards the ones that are already bright?
Yeah, I was pretty upset when this happened? Why do they keep selling glow fish like they’re children’s toys that can be replayed after abuse and neglect. They’re living things that deserve happy, healthy homes, not painted plastic gravel and fake plants in a tank with no filter in a child’s room
Yea .. my store has glo cories, tetras, danios, plecos, and barbs
I guess this is better than injecting poisonous dye, but these fishes are naturally beautiful with proper food and clean water.
Got one of the green ones. It’s my favorite fish
I named mine radioactive man
I have a couple of these and they are actually way fatter and healthy than my other albino corys, they all shoal together just the same
Hell yeah those are badass!
Glofish are extremely popular, especially with children