FishProfiles.com Message Forums

BANGKOK (AFP) - Researchers in Thailand said they had successfully bred and raised hundreds of the threatened Archer fish, which had never before lived for more than a week after artificial breeding.

The Fresh Water Fisheries Research and Development Center has bred and raised 500 of the fish since April, the center's director Chaisiri Sirikul said.

The young fish were now 42 days old and each was about two centimeters (one inch) long, he said.

"As far as we know, no other country has had success in breeding this fish," he told AFP. "We are the first."

The center, located in the northern province of Nakhon Sawan, began a breeding program in 2002, but until now attempts to keep the environmentally sensitive Archer fish alive longer than a week had failed.

If the program proved successful, the fisheries department plans to use the specimens as breeding stock and eventually sell some as pets.

In Thailand, Archer fish were found largely in the Bung Borapetch lake in Nakhon Sawan, but overfishing has nearly led to their disappearance there.

"We hope the successful breeding will help conserve these fish," Chaisiri said.

The six Archer species occur in estuaries and freshwater from Southeast Asia to the Western Pacific. They are not listed as endangered, but destruction of mangrove swamps in the region threatens to cause a significant decline in their numbers, according to researchers.

The aptly-named fish, also called toxotes chatareus, are known for floating just below the water's surface and shooting a stream of water as far as 1.5 metres (five feet) into the air at insects resting on flora above the water to catch them for food.

[link=http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050525/sc_afp/thailandanimalfish_050525171020]http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050525/sc_afp/thailandanimalfish_050525171020" style="COLOR: #f4e8e0[/link]

That's a very cool article, i hope they are sucessful in helping these little guys!