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Provenance - What Is It? And Why Does It Matter With Fishes?

The word 'provenance' originated in the world of antiques and fine art, to describe the historical trail associated with an artefact since the moment of its creation. The inference here is that there exists with the artefact some means of verifying that it is the genuine article - usually some form of documentation. As an example, let us assume that a piece of furniture, purported to eb a work by Chippendale, is offered for sale, and you are interested in purchasing it. Needless to say, we are not in the position of being able to ask Chippendale himself if the article is genuine, as he has long since gone to the great carpentry shop in the sky. However, there are ways and means of determining if the article is genuine, and therefore worthy of the stratospheric price tag that will be associated with it. If, for example, there is an original bill of sale accompanying the artefact, signed and dated by the maker, along with a letter containing a detailed description of the artefact, then we can be reasonably certain that the article IS genuine, and not some fake lash-up concocted in a Third World sweatshop. In the case of many of the most prestigious objets d'art, be they furniture, paintings etc., the provenance is known in great detail and publicly documented in many sources - particularly those that find their way into the collections of our great museums and galleries - so that, for example, I can be certain that the painting on display near to my home at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool that is labelled Echo and Narcissus is indeed the original work by John William Waterhouse (not least because the gallery bought the painting direct from the artist, and the documentation accompanying it is voluminous!).

What has this got to do with fishes? Simple. Fishes have a provenance too - a historical trail that they have followed since birth, and knowledge of that historical trail is a vital tool that the aquarist can use to determine the fitness of the fishes being bought.

Now our fishes, being considerably less costly than Chippendale furniture or Old Masters, tend not to attract the same level of scrutiny - most people are going to exhibit only a minor degree of concern over something costing $5, while the concern over something costing $500,000 is going to be an awful lot greater. However, for those on limited incomes, knowing something about the fishes being bought, particularly a sought after species that one has saved up long and hard to acquire, is valuable indeed.

This is where a good dealer is well worth cultivating. Good dealers are interested in cultivating you, the customer, as a long term source of income. They also know that this goal is only achieved if the customer is satisfied with purchases, advice, assistance etc., and therefore good dealers spend time finding out what you want, and spend time coaching newcomers on the pitfalls that await the unwary. They also take time to examine their potential new stock, making sure that said stock is healthy and in good condition before they take it on board. After all, if the fishes die like flies after the dealer has bought them, the dealer takes a less than welcome financial hit. But likewise, the dealer takes a hit of a less direct, but more lasting kind, if the fishes die soon after he's sold them to a customer. Wise dealers know this, which is why finding one is your first good step toward a happy long term aquaristic life. Because, unless you're in the fortunate position of someone like Ad Konings, who can go diving in Lake Malawi and catch his own Mbunas, or enjoy the largesse that was the stock in trade of Herbert Axelrod during his TFH career, you are not in the position to check out the provenance of your fishes beyond the time they've spent at the dealer's. The dealer's financial interest in checking the provenance at the wholesaler, however, is a good deal greater than yours if he's an independent, and so, those stand alone pet shops that are run by people who do it because they enjoy it as well as earn a living from it are little gold mines well worth seeking out. Even some of the bigger names in the industry can be good to latch on to if they're specialists (e.g., here in the UK, the Maidenhead Aquatics franchise that has 50-odd branches across the country is a decent one to check out). Outfits run by specialists and enthusiasts will always carry a certain weight when they offer advice - especially if the staff includes full time fishkeepers outside of working hours, several of whom keep challenging species, breed them, or exhibit regularly at fish shows. If your dealer has a proudly displayed rack of show trophies with a goodly number of first prizes among them, you've hit pay dirt.

Better still, if your dealer passes on his intelligence gathering results to you, and warns you off certain fishes citing good reasons for doing so, then this is an occasion when you will be glad you've read this piece and discovered the word 'provenance'. The man I spent 30 years buying fishes from before he retired did just that with me - warned me off touching certain species and told me the reasons why. It was courtesy of him and his little network of contacts that I discovered about five years ago that Rummy Nosed Tetras should be scrutinised with especial care if you hear even a whisper that they're sourced from Singapore, because of the 'hot housing' method used there to raise them from fry. Rummies have always been a problem species to raise, not just because the parents take some persuading to spawn, but because the fry are possibly the slowest growing of all the popular Characins, and thus, bringing them to saleable size is a headache. Likewise, I was warned to check Pristellas with care because some outlets have, in recent times, shipped inbred stock, some of which I have to say even looks as if it was spawned in an aquarium somewhere amid the ruins of Chernobyl. Pristellas, if they are treated properly, and their breeding is conducted with a view to maintaining their genetic diversity, are nice hardy fishes that live long, trouble free lives in our aquaria. Inbred ones, on the other hand, are a disaster waiting to happen. So it pays to ask hard questions and check your proposed stock! A good dealer will do much of this hard work on your behalf, and make sure that when he sells a fish to you, it's passed due tests and scrutiny. Moreover, he'll pass on warnings to avoid certain fishes from certain sources, citing reasons why, and in doing so, he'll boost your confidence that you're being catered for with due care and attention. Proof of the pudding in the case of the relationship between myself and my LFS is the length of the relationship - I wouldn't have stuck with him for 30 years if he'd been a bad one!

On the subject of fishes with a suspect provenance, I avoid all specimens of Papiliochromis ramirezi except the true wild type like the plague. Why? How many people here have reported that Rams have been delicate? There are reasons for this. Wild type Rams (the ones I call 'Venezuelan Rams' because that's where they originate from, and incidentally, what they're called in quite a few UK dealerships to distinguish them from the Bolivian Rams) are somewhat fussy about conditions, but generally, if kept warm, will adapt to a variety of aquarium water chemistry parameters if acclimatised with some care, and go on to live long, happy lives. Trouble is, someone decided that the spectacular colours of the original ramirezi weren't good enough (where do these people come from, and more to the point, what are they smoking when they arrive at such decisions?) and so poor old Papiliochromis ramirezi was subject to a crash course in selective breeding. And like most crash courses, the end result was about as robust as a house of cards in a Category 5 hurricane. Even back in the late 1980s the writing was on the wall for this species, when I was informed that some specimens making their way into the market had been boosted artificially with hormone feeding to make them extra colourful. Er, what ... someone felt the need to jazz up a fish that already boasts myriad rainbow hues and iridescent spangles? Then along came the assorted colour varieties that differed from the wild original, and, lo and behold, problems centred upon inbreeding started to make themselves manifest. Consequently, new aquarists seeing these fishes for the first time, going starry eyed over them, become thoroughly enchanted by the idea of having these fishes at home, and discover the hard way that the world of Rams can be a minefield for the unwary. Again, it pays to check the provenance of your fishes - what stock they were bred from, what happened to them at the wholesalers, and what attrition rate the dealer suffered when he took them on. My LFS categorically refused to stock all except local bred livebearers for six years because of problems with Singapore sourced Guppies and Mollies, and had similar woes with some Angelfish back in the early 1990s. But, being a good dealer, he warned me off them, told me that if I wanted Angelfish, that I should hang fire until he obtained some local bred ones, whereupon I decided I'd stick to Characins and Corys for the current setup

Oh, and those who are thinking of splashing out good money on a Malawi Rift Lake setup should be doubly vigilant in checking their proposed species - there are, lamentably, some very dodgy hybrids in circulation. Good outfits will not only be able to tell you which species you're buying, but will have a handle on the population variants you're buying too. They'll keep their Mbunas segregated by species AND by population variants if they know they're obtaining variants of a given species, and they'll be clearly labelled as such. And, of course, it goes without saying that decent outfits won't touch dyed or tattooed fishes with a 60 foot barge pole

So, another word for your vocabulary - 'provenance'. A modest word that means a LOT in the world of fishkeeping. A fish with good provenance is well worth the extra you'll pay for it - for one thing, it'll probably live a lot longer than one without.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Well typed Calilasseia, very well typed. Sorry to hear that your dealer is retiring, but at least now he can spend more time at home with his own fish. I would like to thank you for mentioning something that I have suspected for years, most LFS live bearers are so over bred they should have legs by now instead of fins . Also let us not forget the infamous "glo-fish" danio also, a true Frankenstein among fishes. I will say however that like in Frankenstein it is not fair to judge the creations and call them monsters but rather it is the mad scientist and lovers of "enhanced" fish that are the monsters.

Excellent essay Cali.

I've leanred that things like F0 or F1 are good things, but don't necesarily know all the reasons why.

And I agree with Stuff_gnome that it's very sad the genetic state that most livebearers, tetras, angels, and other common fish are sold. However, when it comes to the "glo-fish" danios... they were never created for the aquarium hobby. They were created for environmental purposes to identify polluted waterways. The aquarium hobbyists started selling them because they really do look cool, and their lot is not nearly as sad as that of dyed, injected, or tattooed fishes.
However, breeding these danios with other "normal" danios could pose a problem, since the fluorescent gene does breed true sometimes. Who knows what kind of mutations it could cause down the road.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

As for my retired dealer, he's handed over the place to someone who either knows his stuff, or is prepared to learn. The new guy is about the same age as me, and he actually asks me for advice if he sees something in the wholesalers that looks interesting but might cause problems maintenance wise. How many dealers do that?

The new owner has also learned about provenance pretty quickly. He went shopping around for some alternative suppliers, and found one that ships UK bred livebearers. The new batches of Guppies he's been getting have been lovely! He is, however, at the moment, trying to find somewhere that supplies Kuhlii Loaches that don't die within a week. Just lately, they've become the latest 'problem species' on the block, which is a pity, because GOOD kuhlii Loaches are nice, hardy fishes. Once again, the finger of blame seems to be pointing Singapore way ...

He's also latched onto some local breeders and arranged some nice deals in exchange for certain key species. He's told me he can sell every juvenile Panda Cory I can ship amongst others, and another guy has been told that if he can supply 50 juvenile Angelfishes a month, the new owner will take them on. He's a big fan of local bred stock because he knows it won't keel over in his tanks

Once again, it pays to cultivate people like this ...


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Very nice Cali,

And loooooong .

I don't think it was your intention to drive the Provenance conversation into a direction of color breedings as you focussed more on wild strands, but in that real knowing where the fish comes from is a very important factor as well. And I am not talking about really expensive fish either. Like - has anyone ever tried to get a pure strand of platies out of fish that came from setups with mixed colors in the tank? The same is true for my beginning interest in Apistos and their color strands (like Triple-Red or Double-Orange).

Anther Note:

and he actually asks me for advice if he sees something in the wholesalers that looks interesting Oh no - he is going to end up with Cories only

Have fun, and again nice writing (as usual),

Ingo

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Proud Member of the New Jersey Aquatic Gardeners Club

Well if he starts stocking some exotic Corys I'll take them off his hands

However, he does stock some interesting things ... he's recently had some very nice Labidochromis caeruleus in stock, some nice Red Rainbows, and he's recently acquired a couple of those weird Dragon Gobies. But before he got some of these things, he did check what they needed ... he didn't just acquire them and hope for the best.

I'm trying to persuade him to get some Anomalochromis thomasi Cichlids ... trouble is he's having problems finding a supplier. However, if I avail myself of the ones at Maidenhead Aquatics and breed them he won't have trouble finding a supplier anymore

As for Platies that have crossed with gay abandon and mixed and matched their genes like crazy, they're probably close to the wild type by now, though more by accident than design. Oddly enough, Platies seem to be pretty robust, and thus far (fingers crossed) have yet to manifest the inbreeding woes seen in some other fishes. But then most Platy colour strains were properly line bred and given repeated crosses between lines, dating as they do from the era of the venerable Innes book, when commercial breeders did the job properly instead of cutting corners as all too many do now. Likewise, most of the Betta strains in circulation originated from breeders who were dedicated to producing a lasting fish of the desired type, and promptly went out and studied their genetics properly. With several thousand people engaged in intensive show Betta breeding here in the UK alone, and taking pains to ensure the robustness of their stock, any of the crumbs from their tables are going to be pretty healthy fishes.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Oh no, you mentioned platy crosses. It was my understanding that in order to get the rainbow of colors(oddly enough there is a rainbow platy), somewhere along the lines some swordtail genes were added to the mix. I vaguely remeber something about the all red platies being pretty much impossible to come up with without this addition. Would know more more about this be any chance? On the same note of breeding true colors, black mollies are so hard to keep a true black. It has been my experience that you have to cull a large portion of the off spring if you don't want them turning into marble mollies.

What about Endler's, I hardly ever see them anywhere and no one has done any real selective breeding of them as far as I know.

There are several breeders of endler's that I know of who are trying to keep their wild strains relatively pure by only collecitng wild stock from specific areas. However, like guppys, part of the fun of breeding endlers is in creating new strains and trying to create new stable varieties.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...