History was made with the $24,999.99 fish!
- Thread starter revhtree
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I have a funny story about this thread, I visited my lfs today and thought that he would find it interesting that a $25000 fish was just sold, he told me that he has been trying to get one for the last 15 years and tried to buy it himself but it was already gone
Really interesting. Makes trying to catch fish at depth not as difficult as some of you make it out to be but rather expensive to. Decompression and the time it takes to come back up is what makes it risky it seems. It seems a heck of a lot safer than cave diving. The guy who dives down 120 meters (peppermint angel depth) in a dress shirt and shorts rather than a wetsuit lol . I also learned why certain wrasses seem to have surnames to them.
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geordie61
New Member
Fish that are caught at depths over 100ft are brought to the surface by a diver who himself has a slow return to the surface to negate suffering the bends. At each holding point for the diver on the way up a fish that rare would have a small tube pushed into its swim bladder which releases air and the pressure from the fish. If you can stream it, a programme that was on BBC4 quite recently called Pacific Abyss shows divers doing exactly this with rare and unidentified species they collect from the deep.
geordie61
New Member
Hi,any fish caught at those depths have a small tube inserted into there swim bladder to release the pressure as they ascend with the diver who also has a slow return to the surface to prevent getting the bends which can be fatal. When the diver stops at certain points on the way up this procedure is carried out, there was a series a couple of months ago shown here on BBC4 called Pacific Abyss and this procedure was carried out a number of times for rare and unidentified fish returned to the dive boat for identification and logging. Hope this helps.
code4
Valuable Member
There is always someone willing to pay for something unusual. I do hope the fish all the best. We all have fish in our tanks someone else would not purchase. I love the pair of regal angels in my tank. They are fat and healthy. I hope to have them long enough to become bored of them. I don't bore easily.
RobertN
Active Member
My main concern is just with how much reliable information and knowledge is available about the prevalence of this fish in its natural environment. In the video (posted earlier in the thread) interviewing the man from the Waikiki Aquarium about the Peppermint Angel they had, he said that there was very little we knew about this fish.....and if I'm not mistaken, that video was made only a few years ago. The question I would like to know the answer to is, is it "rare" in this hobby, in scientific circles, simply because it's from such deep waters and is hard to obtain or is it also rare because the number of individuals in the wild is low. If the number of individuals is low, it obviously isn't because of overcollecting, but could be because of other factors affecting the ocean that have upset the balance and stability of the habitats. And if it's still the case that we don't know yet whether the numbers of individuals in the wild is at a good level or not, should we really be collecting them from the wild?
Ligeia
Community Member
Peppermint angels are relatively common I believe but the "rare" aspect comes from the fact that they are SUPER cryptic and come from deep water thus making collection efforts very difficult as divers have limited time with rebreathers. The same goes for most "rare" fish in the hobby. Basically, most of the species (sans Banggai Cardinals) are not endangered in the wild but the rarity has to do with the supply chain. For example a Royal Gramma in the US costs like 15-20 bucks but in Australia they easily run for 100 +.
Ligeia
Community Member
Also, a question about deep water fish now that we are on the topic...
Do you think our hobby will ever reach the point where we can collect ACTUAL deep water fish? Like Gulper Eels, Deep Sea Anglers, Viperfish, etc. AND keep them in tanks at home?
That would be one heck of a system to set up.
Do you think our hobby will ever reach the point where we can collect ACTUAL deep water fish? Like Gulper Eels, Deep Sea Anglers, Viperfish, etc. AND keep them in tanks at home?
That would be one heck of a system to set up.
Maybe a tank kept under pressure? Need some engineers on this one. Like patients buying hyperbaric oxygen tents but reverse for the tank.
Ligeia
Community Member
Yes! If an engineer could comment that would be wonderful!
Cold deep-sea fish hypothetically be bought up in a similar way to Peppermint angels to live in a normal environment?
I would say unless the tank is somehow pressurized, then definitely not. For example look st the "world's ugliest animal", the blowfish. Everyone knows what this disgusting creature looks like at surface level. Yet if you look at it in it's natural environment, it would look like a completely normal fish. The same would likely happen for other twightlight dwellers in our tanks and the fish sould suffer greatly.
We could bring them up under pressure, sure. The hard part would be building a display and then transferring them to the display. Water pressure increases by 1 atmosphere (14.7 psi) for each 10m (33 ft) you go down in depth. At 900m where a deep sea angler would live that equates to 91 ata (~1,300 psi).
Lets assume that we've made most of the aquarium out of welded plate steel with a viewing window.
Triton is building subs that are capable of diving to 2,200 m and is using 261 mm thick PMMA acrylic. If we half that to get close to our 900 m equivalent pressure depth, and without going into the shape of the acrylic (spherical vs flat viewing window), we would need something about 130mm (5") thick for just a viewing window.
We're going to need one heck of a sump pump!
Lets assume that we've made most of the aquarium out of welded plate steel with a viewing window.
Triton is building subs that are capable of diving to 2,200 m and is using 261 mm thick PMMA acrylic. If we half that to get close to our 900 m equivalent pressure depth, and without going into the shape of the acrylic (spherical vs flat viewing window), we would need something about 130mm (5") thick for just a viewing window.
We're going to need one heck of a sump pump!
That settles it.....sub rides to the bottom for everyone so we can see our fish. 
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