"Nano" Clownfish

[TheActiveCactus]

I was wandering the aisles of my lfs during my lunch break today, and I saw what looked to be juvenile ocellaris clowns labeled as "nano" clowns. I was told that the store's supplier claims that they are a special breed of ocellaris that have been bred to stay relatively small, however the store had not had them in stock long enough to confirm or deny this claim. I've done some research and found a few threads on other sites mentioning something similar, but they were all several years old and inconclusive. 

 

Is this a new (real) thing? I suspect that they may just be very young, run-of-the-mill ocellaris clowns. 

 

Anyways, I picked one up out of curiosity (they were fairly cheap) and I'll try to remember to update down the road. So far it has been eating well, though it looks a bit thin. Hopefully it turns out alright. 

 

That's a U.S. dime for scale, about 18mm across.

 

[Beer]

I’ve seen them labeled like this around me. One of the LFS owners told me that the wholesaler had them labeled that way; they were just juveniles. They had me actually considering clowns for a second.

[Tamberav]

Marketing to get people to buy them.

 

They have stubby clowns with missing vertebrae but if you ask me...they shouldn't be bred on purpose to be deformed that way.

[TheActiveCactus]

8 hours ago, Tamberav said:

Marketing to get people to buy them.

 

They have stubby clowns with missing vertebrae but if you ask me...they shouldn't be bred on purpose to be deformed that way.

My first thought was marketing as well.

 

I agree that animals shouldn't be bred for certain traits at the expense of their quality of life (assuming our fish have some capacity to suffer, which I would imagine most of us think is true).

 

That being said, I would also guess that most people who agree with your comment would not have the same problem with the (humane) breeding of animals like dogs and goldfish, which can certainly suffer negative health effects due to their unnatural selection and resulting "deformities". 

[BlennyBoi]

On 3/29/2019 at 11:13 PM, TheActiveCactus said:

My first thought was marketing as well.

 

I agree that animals shouldn't be bred for certain traits at the expense of their quality of life (assuming our fish have some capacity to suffer, which I would imagine most of us think is true).

 

That being said, I would also guess that most people who agree with your comment would not have the same problem with the (humane) breeding of animals like dogs and goldfish, which can certainly suffer negative health effects due to their unnatural selection and resulting "deformities". 

yeah, this really bothers me. just looking at the balloon mollies and baloon rams at the fish shop is enough to put me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. why do people think breeding and selling intentionally deformed fish is ok?