12/29/2005

Happy Christmas Fish and of Tours

I was typing the following search expression in the google search field "Aquarium + Fish + Christmas". This was my attempt to find any worthwhile information about aquarium keeping and Christmas.

Maybe there were things more interesting in aquarium keeping and Christmas than a diver dressed up as Santa Claus feeding the fishes of a Public Aquariums.


Well, According to an online entry posted dated a couple of years ago there is a Rift Lake Cichlid called the Christmas Fulu.

The Christmas Fulu's name is derived from two sources. The "Christmas" part of the name is a reference to this fish's coloration during breeding. When breeding, the Christmas Fulu will have a bright red and green coloration, colors often associated with Christmas.

The second part of the Christmas Fulu's name comes from the family of cichlids that this fish belongs to. Fulu is another word for "haplochromine", or hap. Some hobbyists even call this beautiful fish the "Christmas Hap" or the festive name, the "Happy Christmas Fish."


Haplochromine... This means only the male can achieve the full Christmas coloration. I wonder if this would have been a good Christmas Gift for a fellow Aquarist. Perhaps a fish atlas would be better.

The other Christmas-related entry was a series of articles written by Howard Norfolk , for Aquarticles, about his tour of China during the Winter, which incidentally is a travelogue of the different Public Aquariums and ornamental fish shops in the different cities in China. It is an interesting account and has an ample number of pictures.

ARTICLE INFORMATION:
Author: Howard Norfolk
Title: A Tour of China in Winter
Link to Beijing Aquarium Article
email: comments@aquarticles.com
Date first published: January 2005
Publication: Original to Aquarticles
Reprinted from Aquarticles:
http://www.aquarticles.com