Friday, November 05, 2004

How did they find it?

Weather loaches (Misgurnus anguillicaudatus) were my favorite fish to buy for our tropical aquarium when I was growing up. I thought it was neat because they buried themselves in the gravel and went crazy when the barometric pressure changed. After a few months of not seeing one, we would root around in the gravel, but could never find any trace of it. So I wonder how the heck someone found a weather loach in a wetland in Oregon, as reported here (from the NAS Alert System). Apparently the fish have escaped from fish farms and have also been used as bait. The fact that this species can handle low dissolved oxygen levels probably makes it a prime candidate to populate disturbed, eutrophic bodies of water.

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