Glow critters!

[Marnol D]

Hello,

 

So glofish have been in the hobby for awhile now with bettas being introduced recently. At what time do you think we will start seeing glow shrimp and snails or glow bottom feeders like Cory cats?  
 

I am  not the biggest fans of glofish but that’s due to the fact that I haven’t really seen one that sparks my interest or looks better than the normal ones. 
 

Do y’all think the gloinverts are in the works or it’s something no one is working on? 

Edited February 17, 2021 by Marnol D

[Streetwise]

The commercial brand is GloFish®, with no 'w'. They seem to specialize in color variants of common, resilient fish. I would be surprised if they expanded to anything temperamental, or which could be eaten by anything in the existing product line.

I hope that hobbyists are not confused by the names.

The glowlight tetra, Hemigrammus erythrozonus, is a fish from the wild. If hobbyists could rename a fish, I would suggest redline tetra.

There may be other species with 'glow' in their common name.

[Brandy]

2 minutes ago, Streetwise said:

The commercial brand is GloFish®, with no 'w'. They seem to specialize in color variants of common, resilient fish. I would be surprised if they expanded to anything temperamental, or which could be eaten by anything in the existing product line.

I hope that hobbyists are not confused by the names.

The glowlight tetra, Hemigrammus erythrozonus, is a fish from the wild. If hobbyists could rename a fish, I would suggest redline tetra.

There may be other species with 'glow' in their common name.

I gotta say, Streetwise is not off the mark here. My kid kept talking about glow tetras, and I thought he was meaning the Glofish type. He kept telling me he thought they looked better under normal lights...Then I realized he was looking at glowlight tetras and confusing them with Glofish tetras. He liked glowlights. 

To be honest, I can't speculate on the likelihood of commercial availabilty of GloFish inverts. There are already fluorescent proteins spliced into shrimp for scientific research, and it is not difficult to do. Or at least no more difficult to do than in mice or fish.

[FrozenFins]

Honestly shrimp come is so many different colors that to make them "glow" would ruin theres no point.  But I guess bettas are very colorful too, and they have glowing varients. 

I deffentley agree with @Streetwise when I first heard of glolight tetras, i thought it was another manmade fish like the glofish. If they were the redline tetra, would make WAY more sense. But I beleive red light tetra already exists they are under the scientific name of hyphessobrycon amapaensis. 

I have kept glofish before and found that they are very fin nippy. They wouldn't stop chasing my fish around the tank. They were also very boring as they would just sit in the corner or wherever doing nothing. Most of my fish greet me with "I'm hungry" face in the morning, but they would have nothing to do with me.

Edited February 17, 2021 by James Black

[CT_]

I wonder if there's enough "meat" there to make them fluorescent enough to see easily.  IIRC its the muscle in fish that they made express the FP.  I might be interested in a clear shrimp with GFP.  I have zero interest in the fish though. 

I'd love to see bioluminescent fish or maybe plants.  I saw the first bioluminescent plant in person a few years ago and it was really neat, but also really dim.

[Streetwise]

Apparently, all living things are bioluminescent:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2002/nov/14/science.research

Most are quite boring, including humans:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jul/17/human-bioluminescence

Edited February 17, 2021 by Streetwise
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