[hamdogg08]

I was at my LFS, and I saw some pretty awesome looking glowlight danios. There were some red ones and some yellow ones. Are these fish for real, or are they dyed? If the latter, forget that! That stuff's wrong no matter how cool they make the fish look.

 

[Lupin]

They're glofish which are not dyed fortunately. Still unnatural to me.:shake: Danio choprae, on the other hand, deserves better attention.:thumbsup:

 

[herefishy]

From what I can gather, these fish are genetically engineered and will maintain their color. Another infringement of nature by man to make a dollar. I must say, though, they are very colorful.

 

[hamdogg08]

Are they able to withstand a strong current like Zebra danios?

 

[Lupin]

Are they able to withstand a strong current like Zebra danios?

If you are talking about the fish you saw, they're still the very same zebra danios you see in other petshops. Danios do withstand currents.

 

[hamdogg08]

Oh, so they just took a freakishly red zebra danio, bred it to another equally freakishly red ZD, repeated...and viola! How these glowlights came to be more or less?

 

[herefishy]

I hate to repeat hearsay, but I'll do it here. Some mad scientist broke into the chromasome chain a added something to get the colors. They are supposed to breed true colors. I may have to get into my magazine stack, I believe I may have an article in TFH on the subject.

 

[xingumike]

i believe they added a something from either plankton or jellyfish dna, they were originally engineered to alert people to containments in the water i think. Was done in far east asia and then some american company got hold of it and copyrighted them, thus making it a illegal to sell the fry if you get them to breed.

Idiots is the politest possible word i can think of to describe these people, please dont buy them

 

[hamdogg08]

I was on the bubble as far as buying these after seeing the negative replies. When I saw that they were nine bucks a piece, I decided to pass...Thanks for the input though!

 

[miagrrl]

they look like lite brite pegs.....creepy

 

[blend708]

aquazoo in japan made them..some of the variants are pretty stunning! Yes you are right they were made with jellyfish/annenome dna and thier colors do hold true,even through breeding aquazoo.com is thier website

 

[okiemavis]

Glofish are genetically engineered zebra danios. Their genes were spliced with something that glows under a blacklight to make them like that. I think what they were actually spliced with is proprietary.

Blend, I'm not sure where you got the idea that they were invented by aquazoo? Glofish are copyrighted by Yorktown Technologies and cannot be bred, sold, bartered etc. by anyone except authorized retailers without breaking the law.

My biggest issue with Glofish is the company that produces them has *NO* quality control. My LFS gets them and half of them have crooked spines. They don't seem to cull any of their fish to improve the line, which I think is very irresponsible. They also seem to sell any fish, even the ones born with obvious genetic defects. This is very irresponsible, and I see no reason to support them.

 

[Little-Fizz]

My biggest issue with Glofish is the company that produces them has *NO* quality control. My LFS gets them and half of them have crooked spines. They don't seem to cull any of their fish to improve the line, which I think is very irresponsible. They also seem to sell any fish, even the ones born with obvious genetic defects. This is very irresponsible, and I see no reason to support them.

Once I read up about these and I think they only used one batch of eggs and injected them with the natural colouring or whatever and then massively inbred them. So thats probably why they are so disgusting. Lol This is a really old post.

 

[iamntbatman]

I would venture to guess that there are more genetic defects in the fish because of the tampering that has been done with their genes. However, I would also assume that the company that's breeding these fish is less experienced with fish breeding and sales than conventional breeding operations due to the nature of their company, so they probably aren't as wary of the defects and the desire to cull deformed fish from stock that gets sold to hobbyists.

Maybe it's just the scientist in me, but for some reason I have much less of a problem with the invention and sale of these fish than I do with man-made fish developed using more crude methods, such as blood parrots.

 

[blend708]

Glofish are genetically engineered zebra danios. Their genes were spliced with something that glows under a blacklight to make them like that. I think what they were actually spliced with is proprietary.

Blend, I'm not sure where you got the idea that they were invented by aquazoo? Glofish are copyrighted by Yorktown Technologies and cannot be bred, sold, bartered etc. by anyone except authorized retailers without breaking the law.

My biggest issue with Glofish is the company that produces them has *NO* quality control. My LFS gets them and half of them have crooked spines. They don't seem to cull any of their fish to improve the line, which I think is very irresponsible. They also seem to sell any fish, even the ones born with obvious genetic defects. This is very irresponsible, and I see no reason to support them.

Sorry not aquazoo...it was Azoo, Taikong Corp of japan that made the original T-1's T-2's...some of the fish are pretty spectacular looking..but i agree most of the ones i see a stores look pretty bad..diddnt know it was illegal to breed them either...guess i should tell my breeder that,he's been churning out nice batches of them for about a year now!

Thats a pretty nice looking fish

 

[Sarah567]

Glofish are genetically engineered zebra danios. Their genes were spliced with something that glows under a blacklight to make them like that. I think what they were actually spliced with is proprietary.

Blend, I'm not sure where you got the idea that they were invented by aquazoo? Glofish are copyrighted by Yorktown Technologies and cannot be bred, sold, bartered etc. by anyone except authorized retailers without breaking the law.

My biggest issue with Glofish is the company that produces them has *NO* quality control. My LFS gets them and half of them have crooked spines. They don't seem to cull any of their fish to improve the line, which I think is very irresponsible. They also seem to sell any fish, even the ones born with obvious genetic defects. This is very irresponsible, and I see no reason to support them.

Hello,

My name is Sarah and I work for Yorktown Technologies, the exclusive licensor of GloFish® fluorescent fish. I noticed your discussion thread on this forum and would like to respond to the quality control concerns (specifically, the message posted by okiemavis on Sept. 6, 2008). Also, I would like to note that it is not our intention to intrude on any public discussion forums. Our goal is simply to provide helpful information to the public that will inform the conversation, so our involvement here will be kept to a minimum.

We work extremely hard to ensure the utmost quality of our fish, and any issues with regard to their quality are of great concern to us. To okiemavis: We would like to contact your fish store so that we can discuss any issues directly with them. Can you please contact us through our Contact Page (http://www.glofish.com/contact.asp) with the store’s name and location? We would greatly appreciate your help in resolving this matter.

In addition, we would like to invite everyone to visit our website (http://www.glofish.com) for more information and to help clear up any areas of possible confusion. Our FAQ page (http://glofish.com/faq.asp) answers many of the more common questions about our fish, including a number that have been asked on this forum. In response to several requests, we have now posted video of our fish swimming under a black (ultraviolet) light on our video page (http://www.glofish.com/video.asp). We have also posted a complete license statement at (http://www.glofish.com/license.html) that we hope may clarify some of the questions regarding the restrictions on breeding our fish. As we hope everyone will understand, this is something that is necessary in light of the tremendous resources that have been invested in developing and commercializing these extraordinary fish.

If you have a specific question, comment, or concern that is not addressed on our website, please feel free to contact us directly via our contact page (http://www.glofish.com/contact.asp). We love to hear from fellow hobbyists and will respond to your specific question as quickly as possible!

We appreciate your interest in our GloFish® fluorescent fish and hope you enjoy them!

Best regards,

Sarah
GloFish Support

 

[iamntbatman]

Thank you for your post, Sarah.

It totally slipped my mind - "glowlight danios" are a completely different fish from GloFish. Glowlight danios are a naturally occurring species that has an orange stripe on the side, similar to the glowlight tetra. The neon-colored danios that fluoresce under blacklights are the GloFish, which are genetically engineered fish.

For those who don't know: zebra danios are actually an extremely common fish for research purposes. They're known as a model organism and are often used in developmental and genetic studies. My own university breeds and maintains large populations of them for research purposes.

Sarah: Your company actually provides better general care requirements for fish than the ASPCA website, and for that I applaud you. However, two pieces of crucial information seemed to be missing: nothing is stated about the aquarium cycle and the importance of understanding it in order to keep the fish healthy, and it is not mentioned that GloFish, like ordinary zebra danios, are schooling fish and should ideally be kept in groups in order to thrive.

 

[Sarah567]

Hello again and thank you for the helpful feedback - we really appreciate your suggestions and the points you've made are well taken. We will be sure to include information on these two issues on our next website update.

Thanks again!

Sarah
GloFish Support

 

[crazy4fish]

on your website under "Is my glofish pregnant?" it says that all females carry unfertilized eggs resulting in a "pregnant" look. well how can you tell when the eggs are fertilized?:-?

 

[okiemavis]

Hmm, interesting feedback Sarah, it's actually quite nice to know that your company is cares enough to pay attention to internet talk. However, there is definitely a lack of quality control. Really- the last bag I unloaded actually had feeder guppies mixed in with it! The fish are definitely official Glofish (not some unlicensed breeder), the tank is required to display the Glofish sticker on the tank, etc. I'm sure the person in charge of ordering will contact you if he thinks it's worth his time, but to be honest, he'll probably just stop ordering them. There are a lot of other cool fish, and the store doesn't sell deformed fish, so every one that arrives like that is a loss of profit, not to mention makes the store look bad.

Not sure what's going on with the breeding, but any fish with curved spines should be culled, not bred or sent to a fish store to be sold.